Post by charlie on Dec 1, 2006 22:24:31 GMT -5
I am a raw food chef and I have to make a very extravagant chocolate cake for a client. The actual cake is no problem but then I decided I would like to cover it with a glossy chocolate coat and top it with some sort of molded chocolate design, which obviously involves tempered chocolate. So I started some research about the science of chocolate and am now completely hooked on the whole art of making chocolate!
So I have 'raw' cocoa butter 'raw' cocoa powder and 'raw' cocoa nibs and the sweetener I have is agave, which is a natural liquid sweetener from the cactus plant.
Before I got into the whole tempering thing I think I got lucky and made a pretty good batch of somewhat tempered chocolate, it had some shine and a little snap. However all recent attempts have failed. I have never tempered real chocolate so I don't know if it is just my inexperience or the ingredients, but I spent the entire day in the kitchen yesterday getting very frustrated after each attempt failed.
So this is what I was doing. I melted some cocoa butter then mixed in cocoa powder and the liquid sweetener - it tasted great. I then heated the chocolate to between 113 and 118 degrees, poured some of it onto a marble slab till it cooled and added it back to the warm chocolate and stirred it in, then warmed it slightly until it was about 88 degrees and poured it into molds. I didn't do the seed method as I only had raw untempered cocoa butter to start with. I let it set at room temperature and on all occasions it was soft and dull. One time I put it in the refrigerator after about 30 mins as it still hadn't set and it actually set pretty quick then and had a shine, but today the shine had turned to dull again and there was definitely no snap.
So my questions to all you alchemists are:
1. What do you think the effect of using a liquid sweetener is?
2. Am I just not tempering correctly? Admittedly I may have not been as accurate with the temperature as I could have been and I am now realizing how important it is
3. What do you think about adding cocoa powder to the butter and what percentage of powder to butter do you think I should put in?
I have the nibs but not a champion juicer at home so I don't really have any way of using the actual nibs though I guess that would be the ideal.
What started as a simple project has opened up a whole new exciting world!!
If anyone can give me some advice on this project I would greatly appreciate it as I have set aside tomorrow for another messy day in the kitchen!!
Charlie
So I have 'raw' cocoa butter 'raw' cocoa powder and 'raw' cocoa nibs and the sweetener I have is agave, which is a natural liquid sweetener from the cactus plant.
Before I got into the whole tempering thing I think I got lucky and made a pretty good batch of somewhat tempered chocolate, it had some shine and a little snap. However all recent attempts have failed. I have never tempered real chocolate so I don't know if it is just my inexperience or the ingredients, but I spent the entire day in the kitchen yesterday getting very frustrated after each attempt failed.
So this is what I was doing. I melted some cocoa butter then mixed in cocoa powder and the liquid sweetener - it tasted great. I then heated the chocolate to between 113 and 118 degrees, poured some of it onto a marble slab till it cooled and added it back to the warm chocolate and stirred it in, then warmed it slightly until it was about 88 degrees and poured it into molds. I didn't do the seed method as I only had raw untempered cocoa butter to start with. I let it set at room temperature and on all occasions it was soft and dull. One time I put it in the refrigerator after about 30 mins as it still hadn't set and it actually set pretty quick then and had a shine, but today the shine had turned to dull again and there was definitely no snap.
So my questions to all you alchemists are:
1. What do you think the effect of using a liquid sweetener is?
2. Am I just not tempering correctly? Admittedly I may have not been as accurate with the temperature as I could have been and I am now realizing how important it is
3. What do you think about adding cocoa powder to the butter and what percentage of powder to butter do you think I should put in?
I have the nibs but not a champion juicer at home so I don't really have any way of using the actual nibs though I guess that would be the ideal.
What started as a simple project has opened up a whole new exciting world!!
If anyone can give me some advice on this project I would greatly appreciate it as I have set aside tomorrow for another messy day in the kitchen!!
Charlie