We are back!
After a 4 year hiatus we are back!
We’ve been in the UK for the last four years in the tiniest of London flats where there was barely enough room for the three of us, virtually no kitchen space to continue experimenting with chocolate making. So sad!
But now we are back in our more spacious home back in the Boston area, and ready to restart experimenting with flavors, recipes, and percentages.
Always natural, always simple, always bean-to-bar.
Stay tuned for more updates!
Tempering chocolate is a technique that requires a good deal of precision, but some methods for doing it are easier than others. Read on to discover how to temper chocolate using both traditional and updated techniques, including with a sous vide circulator or with a food processor and hair dryer for better, more foolproof results.
Source: The Food Lab: The Best Way to Temper Chocolate | Serious Eats
So it’s been a while since my last post… After a bit of a hiatus, I’m back in the swing of things. Given the setbacks of the first batch, I was really unsure whether the cold we experienced this winter would allow me to ever get that cacao nibs to melt.
About a month ago, I started up again, the ambient temperature was over 40° F, which meant that it was still chilly, but not too much so. I tried a few different recipes with success. Below is a brief outline of each batch.
Monet’s mother was visiting and it got me inspired to try anew. I worked with about 200 grams of beans, and went through the process. At first, I tried to use the juicer, but again went through the more and more refined powder phase (see previous posts on this). So I switched over to the grinder (Gandhi imports!). With applied heat from the hair dryer, it took about 5 minutes for the cacao to transform into a liquor (based on later investigations, I’m not sure I even need the hair dryer). I let it grind for another 10-15 minutes (i.e. 15-20 minutes total), before I added it some of the raw sugar in there. I pre-processed the sugar by grinding it with a coffee grinder. This created a fine powder of sugar that was easy to blend it. I used about 40 grams of sugar, resulting in an 80% cacao dark chocolate (after roasting, and winnowing, I lost about 40 grams of cacao nibs. I left the sugar and cacao mix blend for about 25 minutes. I poured the mixture into forms, and let the mixture solidify at room temperature. After a couple of hours we were able to test the chocolates.
The results: Tasty! I could taste the bitterness and grittiness of the cacao. This meant that I could adjust the roasting, and let the grinder go longer, but we had chocolates, and they didn’t taste like crap! Of course, I was missing many of the ingredients. Furthermore, I didn’t temper the chocolate (but it looks like it didn’t really need it). Overall a success!!
We had our dear friend Cathy visit us for a couple of nights. Enjoyer of fine foods, I knew that Cathy would like some home made chocolates. My goal with this batch was 2-fold: a) Firm up a basic recipe that I could work from, and b) adjust the blending slightly to see the differences in results. They all used the 300/30 recipe for roasting, and all had 30 minutes of grinding, but there were three versions of blending a) 30 minutes; b) 60 minutes; c) 90 minutes. c) had the added modification of having cacao butter added in, about 40 grams. All had the same amount of sugar, making it an 80% cacao dark chocolate. Given that c) had cacao butter added, it made it closer to 85% cacao.
The results: Delish! You could definitely tell the difference between the different levels of blending. You could still taste some of the grittiness and bitterness:
Lessons: I had a few of lessons:
We played hosts to our dear friends Jeff and Tanya as they were transitioning from one house to another. They stayed with us for a couple of days. On our second night, we enjoyed outstanding sushi from Hana Sushi, down the street from our house. As a dessert, I prepared a new batch of chocolate, with my last 300 grams. This time, I set the oven to 250 degrees, and roasted for 35 minutes, to let the flavor develop a bit more (It seems I could let it go even longer). Grinding for 45 minutes, and blending for another 45. I made a second batch where I added about 85 grams of cacao butter – a mistake it turns out. I also added a couple of drops of vanilla liquor (~ 1 Tbsp) at the start of the blending process to add flavor.
Results: Another great batch. The addition of cacao butter made it a bit too light and too buttery. Just a little too much. I can work on this. Overall a great batch!
On a side note, I had so much left over for Batch 4, that I was able to have some extra for others to taste. I had a colleague try them out, and they had some thoughts on the business model I’ll be working on that in the next couple of weeks, but the big news, is that WE HAVE TASTY TASTY TASTY CHOCOLATE!
Check out the recipes pages for more details.
So the machine came in on Wednesday. It’s an Indian grinder that came recommended from a few sites. Unpacking was an experience: Box to box to plastic to box to styrofoam. At least that way we’re sure it’s not damaged.
On the way through all the cardboard I was greeted with the name of the (I believe) import company:
Well… That’s a good omen.
Continue reading Well at least we have hot chocolate for this snowy day!
Ok, so there’s a lot of excitement about this new adventure… Not sure if it’s because people are genuinely interested in the craft, or if they are more looking forward to tasting some free chocolate…
What ever the case may be, I just ordered a grinder from Ultra (that’s the brand name). It’s about 1/2 the cost of the traditional cocoa grinders, and is supposed to be able to do the same as more professional grinders (from the reviews that I’ve read so far).
I was tempted to go the old school way and get a metate, unfortunately all I could find were either archeological finds or super fancy metate (yes, they can get fancy) that was much more expensive than the wet grinder I found.
So I’m hoping to get the grinder this week, and look for my next experiment at that time (note I salvaged a lot of the cocoa from the first try, so I’ll try to use that).
Stay tuned!
This is a possible solution to bringing the beans…
Grinding chocolate on the metate, the traditional Mexican way.
Following on my update from last night (with more photos now).
It all started really well.
Step 1 was to lay the cacao beans on a cookie sheet and preheat the oven.
The oven was preheated to 250ºF but my gauge indicated that it was closer to 275ºF. The beans were in the oven for 25 minutes. I reduced to 200ºF at about 20 minutes. The smell started out acidic at first, and smoothly progressed to a deep dark brownie smell. Continue reading More on the First Trial
So last night was a big night! I gave it a go with the beans that I had ordered. The roasting, cracking, and winnowing went very well. I was nervous that I was going to lose a lot of good material during the winnowing as the roasted beans broke up into very small nibs. Surprisingly, I don’t think I lost that much.
Where the failure came in was with the grinding. I ran the nibs through the Breville juicer we have. I ran it through about 4 times when the filter/basket broke. It was a loud popping sound. I almost thought that we motor blew up. It was a bit funny afterwards as I stood there in the kitchen thinking I had turned off the juicer but in fact it was still spinning. The damage is minimal (a replacement filter/basket is about $30).
I’ll add pictures later, but for the time being, here’s a teaser of what came out. You can tell that after 5 times, the oils are starting to come out and juice is starting to form. I need to find a better way to grind the nibs without resorting to spending $500 on a machine.
The sign of chocolate liquor, this gives me hope!
