Post by roland on Nov 12, 2014 12:33:09 GMT -5
Hello everybody,
I'm in the first steps of making chocolate. I live in Central america on a little island, and don't have all the materials at hand yet. But I really wanted to try and make my first batch of chocolate. The first try was done with 65% Cocoa Liquor, and 35% of Sugar. But I couldn't get the chocolate to flow in the Premier Wonder Wetgrinder (maybe due to the high humidity which is always around 90%). So there I had a problem then, because I could not get my hands on any cocoa butter. So I improvised and used a little baking grease. A few teaspoons of it and woohoo.... everything was great. I know that is not how it's supposed to be done, but here I had to do with what I have. After Conching & Refining I just poured the chocolate on a thin metal sheet and put it to cool in the fridge. I didn't want to get into tempering right away since I was already happy that everything worked well so far. After a few minutes I took it out, took it off the sheet, and it was now about a 1/4 inch thick beautiful looking chocolate. A few days later I tried a Milk Chocolate recipe,... using 13% baking grease in the mix due my already mentioned problem. Same procedure, same results. Beautiful looking chocolate. Now after about one week I still can not see any signs of bloom due to not tempering. Is that normal? Or did I accidentally temper the chocolate (seems very unlikely), does untempered chocolate not always bloom, or could it be due to the baking grease instead of cocoa butter?
Best regards from the Caribbean,
Roland
I'm in the first steps of making chocolate. I live in Central america on a little island, and don't have all the materials at hand yet. But I really wanted to try and make my first batch of chocolate. The first try was done with 65% Cocoa Liquor, and 35% of Sugar. But I couldn't get the chocolate to flow in the Premier Wonder Wetgrinder (maybe due to the high humidity which is always around 90%). So there I had a problem then, because I could not get my hands on any cocoa butter. So I improvised and used a little baking grease. A few teaspoons of it and woohoo.... everything was great. I know that is not how it's supposed to be done, but here I had to do with what I have. After Conching & Refining I just poured the chocolate on a thin metal sheet and put it to cool in the fridge. I didn't want to get into tempering right away since I was already happy that everything worked well so far. After a few minutes I took it out, took it off the sheet, and it was now about a 1/4 inch thick beautiful looking chocolate. A few days later I tried a Milk Chocolate recipe,... using 13% baking grease in the mix due my already mentioned problem. Same procedure, same results. Beautiful looking chocolate. Now after about one week I still can not see any signs of bloom due to not tempering. Is that normal? Or did I accidentally temper the chocolate (seems very unlikely), does untempered chocolate not always bloom, or could it be due to the baking grease instead of cocoa butter?
Best regards from the Caribbean,
Roland