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Post by gameson on Mar 11, 2013 20:23:14 GMT -5
if you notice, milk chocolate recipe from John adds a cocoa butter instead of cocoa beans. It makes me curious, what is the advantage of adding cocoa butter to your recipe vs more cocoa beans? I believe price is not the reason as the cost per lbs for cocoa butter is approx. the same as cocoa beans (it may even be more expensive for cocoa butter vs cocoa beans in pricing).
Thanks.
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Post by Sebastian on Mar 12, 2013 5:34:19 GMT -5
Decreases the viscosity so you can actually mold it, or enrobe with it. Simply adding more cocoa beans isn't likely to give most people sufficient cocoa butter in their recipe.
It's cost is the reason lecithin is used, so one can reduce the amount of cocoa butter used.
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Post by gameson on Mar 12, 2013 18:46:21 GMT -5
Thanks. Wouldn't it dilute the cocoa content when you add cocoa butter? Why would you count cocoa butter as a cocoa content in final product? Taking John milk chocolate recipe, you can see that the cocoa bean is only 25% and the cocoa butter is 20%, but it says overall cocoa content is 45% instead of 25%... while the rest of 55% consists of sugar and milk powder with lecithin.
I understand cocoa butter comes from processed cocoa bean but then cocoa butter is the fat pressed from the bean (pls correct me if my understanding is wrong), so essentially it's a fat (just as if you add vegetable shortening, I would think, again, pls correct me). so if adding fat, why would it count as a cocoa content?
Thank you for the clarification.
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gap
Apprentice
Posts: 390
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Post by gap on Mar 12, 2013 20:31:32 GMT -5
The cocoa bean is approx 53% cocoa butter and 47% cocoa powder - I'm probably over-simplifying that, but Sebastian can correct me if needed :-)
So the total cocoa content of your bar is cocoa beans (aka cocoa liquor, cocoa mass, cocoa nibs) + added cocoa butter. There is already cocoa butter from the beans you have added, so you need to add any additional cocoa butter as well to arrive at your total cocoa content.
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Post by Sebastian on Mar 13, 2013 5:30:37 GMT -5
Gap has it right. Also there are no rules or standards for calculating cocoa content, so manufacturers default to the method that gives them the higher number (higher is ALWAYS better, right??).
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Post by shrey on Jun 27, 2013 4:28:55 GMT -5
Hi,
This means that unsweetened chocolate is just ground cocoa nibs that have been refined and contain between 50-55% cocoa butter (cocao fat). This type of chocolate contains no sugar so it has a strong, bitter taste that is used in cooking and baking but is never eaten out of hand.
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