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Post by chocolo on May 3, 2017 7:15:51 GMT -5
Hi everyone,
I'm still very new to the chocolate making process and am yet to purchase a melanger to make my chocolate from scratch. I have practised tempering shop bought chocolate and now that I have that technique sorted, I wanted to make chocolate sweetened with coconut sugar, so I melted 140g organic cocoa paste and stirred in (or attempted to stir in) 60g coconut sugar that had been ground down to a fine paste in my nutribullet. However, I had probably stirred in around half of the sugar and the mixture began to thicken and look like it had seized. I tried this method again the following weekend, presuming that some water had somehow dripped into the mixture, but the same thing happened. Can someone explain why? I have purchased some liquid sunflower lecithin, in the hope that this will thin the mixture more and allow me to add the full amount of sugar desired. I have not tried this yet though and didn't want to waste more expensive cocoa paste in case there was a reason to this problem that I was overlooking.
Many thanks for all your help, Lois
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Post by lyndon on May 4, 2017 2:16:57 GMT -5
Your coconut sugar should have ground down to a powder, not a paste, did you add anything else to it?
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Post by chocolo on May 4, 2017 7:20:38 GMT -5
Hi Lyndon, Many thanks for your reply. I ground the coconut sugar to a fine powder, and then added it to the melted cocoa paste. The coconut sugar itself wasn't a paste, sorry I worded that completely wrong! Nothing was added to the coconut sugar.
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Post by lyndon on May 4, 2017 12:38:34 GMT -5
Hmm, it's hard to say then. Presuming the cocoa paste you have is nothing more than smooth 100% cocoa liquor, it should have turned into a gritty paste (think of it a bit like concrete imo), but still a workable paste you can put into moulds. Obviously adding cold sugar will reduce the temperature of the liquor, so you could end up making it tough to work with if the temperature dropped too low, but I presume you are familiar with all that as you've already been tempering chocolate.
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Post by chocolo on May 5, 2017 6:36:20 GMT -5
Hi Lyndon, Yes I have had some practise with tempering and working with chocolate at different temperatures. From what I can remember, the temperature didn't drop too low. Do you think adding some sunflower lecithin will help the mixture if I try it again? Do you measure it out with a syringe as it's such a small amount? (...from what I remember 0.3-0.5%) Is this the percentage of the total weight? So if I am making 200g of chocolate and want to experiment with 0.5% lecithin, then that will be 1g of lecithin to add?
Sorry for so much questions and thank you for your help! Lois
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Post by lyndon on May 5, 2017 6:42:39 GMT -5
I've not worked with less than 3kg of chocolate, measuring a small amount like that might be tricky on kitchen scales, you might be able to get a small cheap one on ebay that does small measurements like 0.1g for being exact.
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Post by Thomas on May 5, 2017 18:27:32 GMT -5
Hi Lois,
Lecithin will not solve your problem. It will help reduce viscosity but won't turn a thick mass into liquid. Post photos next time you have problems. Also, you will never get smooth chocolate without a melanger or some other method that can reduce the particle size of all your ingredients. You also need to consider the fat content. Too little fat will make your mixture very thick.
Thomas
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Post by chocolo on May 6, 2017 4:40:48 GMT -5
Hi Thomas and Lyndon, Thank you for your replies. I have been researching into melangers and am looking to get the premier chocolate grinder. I will have to increase the amount that I make at a time. What is the usual way to measure out lecithin? Do you use a pipette?
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Post by Thomas on May 6, 2017 9:15:44 GMT -5
The premier chocolate grinder is a great melanger and gets positive reviews. When I use lecithin, it's granular and I measure it with a digital scale and the smallest I've ever added was maybe 5g.
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Post by chocolo on May 8, 2017 6:15:19 GMT -5
Ah I see! I bought the liquid lecithin, as I heard that it was easier to incorporate into the mix. Do you pregrind your lecithin granules before you put it into the melanger?
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