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Post by livelihoodchocolate on Mar 6, 2020 20:15:12 GMT -5
I have been trying to create a chocolate for consumers with a sweet tooth and using as little cacao butter as possible. Cacao butter is expensive, and raises the price of a product above what the target consumers would be willing to pay. Cacao is abundant here and literally falls off the trees into my yard, so that is not much of the cost in a bar of chocolate.
I understand that I can control some of the viscosity with ghee (clarified butter), but adding too much lowers the melting point and makes tempering impossible.
I know that I can increase fat percentages by adding whole milk powder, but that fat does not count towards the ability to temper the chocolate, since the temper depends on the crystallization of the cacao butter.
My question is: What is the minimal percentage of fat coming from cacao butter that I must have in order to still temper the chocolate?
I am using the Chocolate Formulator spreadsheet, which is GREAT! I have seen numbers on the forums between 30% to 35% as minimums for cacao butter in a recipe.
Thanks for any advice you can give!
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fred
Novice
Posts: 144
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Post by fred on Mar 9, 2020 17:30:49 GMT -5
I've found you can get good results with at least 35% cocoa butter fat overall. Unfortunately that would mean that you need at least 70% cacao if you are not adding any cocoa butter at all.
Is making your own cocoa butter an option? If you have plenty of cacao, that may still be cheaper than buying it though I don't know what the equipment costs are for making it.
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Post by livelihoodchocolate on Mar 13, 2020 19:50:51 GMT -5
Hi Fred! I'm out here in the jungle, which means that I do have lots of cacao available, but no tech or machine shops or materials available (other than rocks and bamboo...). I would love to extract my own cacao butter, and I tried but was only able to squeeze out a little bit. If you have a low tech way of doing it, even if the percentages are somewhat low, I would love the advice. I want to keep it super low tech so that the local people can operate the business without needing to import electric appliances (except the melanger).
I recently did a small batch: Cocoa solids 300g(48.4%) Sugar 200g(32.3%) Cocoa Butter 20g(3.2%) Milk powder 100g(16.1%)
It was difficult to temper and put into a mold because it was super thick, but it did temper and has a nice "snap" when you break off a piece. It is still way too bitter for the palate here, but I like it!
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fred
Novice
Posts: 144
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Post by fred on Mar 14, 2020 13:52:04 GMT -5
livelihoodchocolate - sadly I'm no expert, but other folks on this site are and might be able to help you out ( Ben might have some ideas). But I think I am good at searching Google! Check out this thread, it's a bit dated but I think relevant: permies.com/t/28103/kitchen/Build-oil-press-yields-oilI think you need some kind of expeller press. I think (but could be wrong, so take this with a grain of salt) that you'd make a cacao liquor (or just run the melanger for a little while) and feed it through the press. The thread discusses solutions for pressing oils that might be helpful in that last step. Have you tried the (very dark) 80% cacao nibs + 20% sugar recipe? You might be able to go down to 70% cacao / 30% sugar. Yes, very dark, but if you melange for a while (like 36-48 hours) it could be a little milder. Just not a super sweet chocolate or milk chocolate. If you have a local vanilla bean that can help a lot. You can also try adding "soy lecithin" to make the whole batch "flow" with less cocoa butter. The batch you describe above is I think about 30% cocoa butter (0.55 * 48.4% + 3.2%) which is pretty low. I haven't had much luck going below 35%.
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