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Post by jackamus on Aug 8, 2021 10:33:52 GMT -5
I'm new to simple chocolate making and a couple of times the melted chocolate goes stiff and cannot be remelted even after using the same recipe each time. What causes to happen?
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Post by Chip on Aug 8, 2021 10:38:13 GMT -5
jackamusI know Ben will know much better than I do about this, but I have experienced this because of a few things: 1. My formula was off. What is the formula you used? 2. The chocolate seized due to water getting into it 3. The chocolate was burned trying to melt it in the microwave. I'm sure there are other reasons but these are the first I thought of.
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Post by jackamus on Aug 8, 2021 10:45:55 GMT -5
Thanks for the quick response Chip.
My recipe is for dark chocolate. 160g Coconut oil 160g Cacao powder 135 Honey
As I said in my post it doesn't always happen. There is no way that water can get into the mix as I am using a large Pyrex bowl sitting with its edge above the rim of the saucepan. I also monitor the level of the water so it only comes about halfway up the bowl.
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Post by Thomas on Aug 8, 2021 11:30:17 GMT -5
That's not really chocolate. It's a concoction which contains cocoa powder. Honey contains water. Water and oil don't mix. You probably got lucky when it worked for you.
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Post by jackamus on Aug 9, 2021 2:21:02 GMT -5
OK. Thanks for that - I had a feeling that honey contained water! So can you give me a good recipe for dark chocolate and milk chocolate?
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Post by Ben on Aug 9, 2021 7:01:52 GMT -5
To make a dark chocolate this way, you can just replace the honey with sugar and the coconut oil with cocoa butter. It won't be particularly good or smooth (it will be quite gritty, in fact), but it will be chocolate. You can make a milk chocolate by replacing some of the cocoa powder with milk powder.
You could make it with coconut oil, but that isn't technically 'chocolate'. That's something called 'compound chocolate'. True chocolate (made with cocoa butter) will need to be tempered, while compound chocolate should set up without tempering, but won't have the snap and mouthfeel of true chocolate.
Note that this site and forum are focused on making chocolate starting from the cocoa bean, which can result in a much better, much smoother chocolate than can be achieved by mixing chocolate's constituent parts. It's a much more involved process and does require at least one piece of non-standard equipment, but the results are night and day better.
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Post by jackamus on Aug 13, 2021 3:33:58 GMT -5
Thanks for the advice. I successfully made a batch of dark chocolate using a recipe from this website. I wanted to make 'Rum and Raisin' chocolate however when I added about 20g of rum essence the chocolate seized! I suspect that the rum essence was largely water. However I was able to rescue the chocolate by adding some more cocoa butter. Next time I will use real rum.
Any suggestions as to what happened?
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Post by Chip on Aug 13, 2021 8:23:57 GMT -5
You cannot use any type of extract that contains water/alcohol. Only use oil. I use all kinds of Lorann oil and have found them to be quite good.
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