siva
Neophyte
Posts: 4
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Post by siva on Sept 4, 2018 17:33:26 GMT -5
Hi :-)
I'm wondering if it is possible to make cacao butter silk by melting untempered cacao butter and then adding 1-2% grated and tempered cacao butter (silk) to it and then putting it into molds. I believe this is referred to as the "Inception Method" for tempering chocolate but I don't ever remember seeing it referenced directly as a way to make more silk.
If any one has experience with this and knows whether or not such a method would be successful for attaining an abundance of tempered cacao butter, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm planning to test it out in a day or two once a food processor arrives to save me some time in grating the cacao butter...
Abundances of Love and Peace Gratitude,
Siva B
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Post by Ben on Sept 4, 2018 18:38:23 GMT -5
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siva
Neophyte
Posts: 4
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Post by siva on Sept 9, 2018 14:50:36 GMT -5
Thank you!
Yes...I guess I'm just seeking to understand why the process is any different than tempering normal chocolate with silk. Like, why use a larger percentage of silk than with regular chocolate? I would think that it might make sense to use a lower % since you are tempering pure cacao butter and nothing else.
Also, is there any significance to using a plastic bag rather than pouring the silk into molds?
Lastly, it is safe to say that if I purchase cacao butter wafers, they are tempered? I ordered some and as it turns out they melted while sitting on my doorstep, so only a few remained in good condition - so I'm also wondering if semi-melted tempered wafers might need to be re-tempered.
Thanks for any assistance / guidance with this.
Hallelujah :-)
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Post by Ben on Sept 10, 2018 9:12:59 GMT -5
You're welcome. I don't have any insight into why John suggests using more tempered cocoa butter when tempering more cocoa butter than when tempering chocolate. I agree that it seems you should be able to do it with the same amount. I think you could probably mold this just as well as putting it in a plastic bag. It's just tempered cocoa butter after all. My guess is that the wafers are shipped tempered, but you'll probably have to ask the manufacturer to be sure. -Ben
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Post by Ben on Sept 10, 2018 9:21:10 GMT -5
On a side note, I think the linked page is describing a way to temper cocoa butter in a way that is very similar to tempering chocolate. It's not really producing 'silk' as is produced by the EzTemper. I had the opportunity to see an EzTemper in action this weekend, and the silk produced by it is silky--which seems logical. The process on the linked page produces a solid block of tempered cocoa butter that is then chopped up or shredded into the chocolate to be tempered. This is different than the EzTemper silk, which is soft and scoop-able. For clarity, maybe we should call cocoa butter produced this way something else like 'tempered cocoa butter' or 'cocoa butter seed'.
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Post by bmikiten on Sept 10, 2018 21:45:32 GMT -5
I've seen the EzTemper results as well (were you in Dallas this weekend?) and if you take the cocoa butter and use a grater to make shredded cocoa butter before you put it in the Sous Vide, you'll get very similar results, I've been doing that for about a year and get perfectly tempered chocolate 100% of the time. Thanks as usual to The Alchemist for making my life easy.
Brian
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Post by Ben on Sept 11, 2018 8:16:55 GMT -5
Yep, I was in Dallas for the festival. I had a table and ran the hands-on bean-to-bar workshop where the creator of the EZTemper, Kerry Beal, taught the class how to temper using several methods, including silk from the EZTemper.
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Post by cacaosublime on Sept 11, 2018 12:52:38 GMT -5
Maybe John recommends 5% silk, because the amount of cocoa butter to be tempered is different? In chocolate, there is less cocoa butter to be crystallized then there is in pure cocoa butter. So 5% silk into 100 grams cocoa butter would be a ratio of 5/100, and tempering 100 grams of chocolate where you use 2% would mean a ratio of 2/40 (roughly assuming the chocolate contains 40% cocoa butter). Which is equal to 5/100. BTW, did you try it yet? Would be interested to hear your experience
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Post by cacaosublime on Sept 11, 2018 12:54:57 GMT -5
Maybe an interesting question for Ask The Alchemist Can you make silk by just tempering as you would a normal chocolate bar?
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Post by Ben on Sept 11, 2018 13:45:43 GMT -5
You can definitely create solid tempered cocoa butter by just tempering normally, but my guess is that you can't create true silk this way (as in the silky stuff created by the EZTemper).
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Post by cacaosublime on Sept 12, 2018 0:48:13 GMT -5
Hi Ben,
My understanding is that silk = tempered cocoa butter. What do you mean by 'true silk'?
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Post by Brad on Sept 12, 2018 3:17:16 GMT -5
Ok... So here's the skinny:
1. Chocolate is a suspension of stuff in cocoa butter. 2. Cocoa butter is chocolate without the stuff. 3. Silk is simply cocoa butter with a very large majority of the type of crystal that gives cocoa butter it's shine and stable structure. 4. Tempered chocolate is cococa butter with a majority of the type of crystal that gives cocoa butter its shine and stable structure. 5. Silk takes a bloody long time to form (usually overnight) and if you mess it up (which is very easy to do), then you have to either waste a day and start over or simply temper your chocolate properly. 6 TEMPERING CHOCOLATE EXACTLY THE SAME AS MAKING SILK EXCEPT YOU SIMPLY COOL IT A COUPLE OF MORE DEGREES AND THEN HEAT IT BACK UP.
The benefits of properly tempering your chocolate are: 1. If you mess up (and I guarantee you will), and all you know how to do is use silk, you're screwed. See you back in the kitchen tomorrow. 2. You don't need to add an extra step or extra equipment in tempering your chocolate (aka making or buying silk which is really silly). 3. You can actually temper your chocolate and get to working with it from scratch in about 25 minutes without pissing around with silk. 4. You actually learn how to use chocolate properly, and also learn how to control the viscosity of it.
At the end of the day, you can piss around with silk and an $800 machine to make it while I temper batch after batch of chocolate and make thousands of dollars of confections with a simple stainless steel bowl and a stockpot of hot water, then enjoy 8 very expensive sushi dinners with the $800 you wasted on a machine that tempers cocoa butter.
TEMPERING WITH SILK: Melt cocoa butter. Cool it to 94 degrees. Use some device you have paid for to hold it at that temp and wait until tomorrow. Go read a book because you can't do any more work today while you wait for your "silk". Tomorrow. Melt your chocolate. Cool it to 91 degrees. Add in some silk and stir for 10 minutes. Get your work done, and swear because it's taken two days to do what could have been done yesterday.
TEMPERING PROPERLY: Melt your chocolate. Cool it to 80 degrees. Reheat it to 88 degrees. Get your work done. Enjoy all day tomorrow with your family. Maybe even take them for an nice dinner.
TRUE STORY FROM SOMEONE WHO DEFINITELY KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING.
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Post by Ben on Sept 12, 2018 12:08:21 GMT -5
cacaosublime: The eztemper creates a silky, soft tempered cocoa butter that the creator of the eztemper named silk (due to it's silky, soft consistency). This is different from a solid block of tempered cocoa butter, which is decidedly not silky. I just think there's benefit to calling the two things by different names to avoid confusion (although I recognize that it's not something that is likely to change). brad: We get it. You don't like silk. But, as I think has been pointed out before, your characterization that work can't be done because you're waiting for the silk to form is misleading. Generating silk in an EZTemper or creating a block of tempered cocoa butter using John's instructions can be done at any time. The idea would obviously be to have a supply on hand, ready to go when you are tempering. Also, on a side note, I don't believe you have to melt and cool your cocoa butter before putting in the EZTemper--you can just put solid cb in and it will produce silk. You can argue that silk isn't necessary, but others find it beneficial.
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Post by Brad on Sept 12, 2018 16:38:14 GMT -5
Ben you're wrong. I'm not against silk. I understand the application. However, a large contingent of people on this forum are learning to make chocolate for the first time and many don't have tremendous amounts of money to waste on unnecessary equipment. A machine that tempers cocoa butter and takes many hours to do so, when you can do the same thing by hand in a few minutes is, in my mind, the definition of unnecessary equipment. It's cheaper for many on this forum to simply learn to do something right, than it is to spend money and shipping on something that does for them what they can do for free with a bit of guidance. THAT is the point I'm trying to make.
If you need silk to bring your chocolate into temper, and you have no silk (not everyone is an expert at planning ahead), then you have to fire up your EZTemper and wait at least 8 hours for the silk created before you can start working, and if you screw that up, well... there goes another 8 hours.
Just learn to temper the damned chocolate! Here's an example:
At 8:00am You start with silk and I start with a block of untempered chocolate. By 9:00am we both have properly tempered bars.
At 8:00am you start to make your "silk" to make bars. By 6:00pm you can use it to temper your chocolate, and by 7:00pm you have properly tempered bars.
What's the difference between silk and properly tempered cocoa butter? NOT A SINGLE THING - other than the fact that you've spent $800 on a useless piece of equipment for the silk.
What's the difference between silk, properly tempered cocoa butter and properly tempered chocolate? NOT A SINGLE THING - other than the fact that only silk needs an expensive piece of equipment to make it.
Brad
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Post by mark on Sept 12, 2018 22:57:41 GMT -5
For the benefit of others who might be reading this thread: making silk does NOT require expensive equipment, you can make it using a low cost sous-vide machine purchased off amazon. See John's info on this here: chocolatealchemy.com/silk/#cocoa-butter-silk-introI've made many thousands of bars of chocolate tempered using silk made this way. It's my preferred way of tempering and I'm very happy to not require any expensive tempering machinery for this part of my process. I also made many batches using Brad's tempering method and I can confirm that indeed does also work very well.
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