Post by telstar on Nov 23, 2023 18:39:53 GMT -5
Because I don't want to sustain the hefty cost of a melanger, I decided to make the second best sweet thing I like to eat during cold season - hazelnut cocoa spread. I like to eat it by the spoon, so a dense creamy texture is essential.
I hate anything "dark" and too natty, basically I want a healthy milk chocolate cream with a little hazelnuts flavor, stable at room temperature. I have studied the commercial products I like the most and done a couple of test batches of about 100g each. Every commercial product available here without sugar is basically garbage in taste, ingredients, texture or all of them. Making my own was the only viable alternative to eating a ton of sugar.
The ratios of the product I like the most are about the following (my estimation looking at label, tasting and educated guesses): 42% sugar, 25% hazelnuts, 11-12% seed oils, 9-10% powdered milk, 7% skim cocoa powder, 6% cocoa butter + dry cow butter, <1% soy lecithin. No natural or artificial flavours added. Total fat content 33%.
I wanted it less sweet and with more aroma, so I used 40% allulose (which should equal to 35% sugar in sweetness) and added real bourbon vanilla powder for flavoring, probably still too few. Replaced the awful seed oils with MCT oil, used lactose-free powdered milk (I'm also lactose-intolerant), and nothing else for the first attempt. It was a disaster! Not so much for the taste, but because the allulose didn't want to melt in any way. Added more oil, useless. Heating it in a glass jar on a water bath made things worse, like when chocolate crystalizes. I googled how to melt allulose, which is very similar to sugar and the only viable alternative to a conching machine at 50-60 degrees is to add water. And that worked! Strangely the cream didn't go crazy unlike chocolate, probably because everything was done at ambient temp.
In the second attempt I adjusted the recipe to be roughly 20% hazelnut paste, 35% allulose, 15% MCT oil, 15% powdered milk, 8% cocoa powder. And added some whey isolate proteins and about 1% sunflower lecithin, a little vanilla powder and 25ml water (on 100g batch) in the end. Now, the water was obviously too much and the texture was very soft (still better than some keto dung they sell), so I let it dry for one night without lid. Still soft but it improved a lot.
I'm posting here for two reasons, first sharing my (work in progress) recipes for other people who like the sweetest spreads but don't want the sugar. What I'm still having issues is the immediate aftertaste which is a bit ACID and the late aftertaste which is MILKY. The commercial cream I like has ZERO aftertaste. To reduce the milky aftertaste, I'm going to reduce the milk amount and compensate it with more whey isolate. For the acid I'm at a complete loss.
The nut cream (100% roasted hazelnuts perfectly milled) is high quality. The cocoa is just a leftover of Lindt cocoa powder sold in supermarkets. I have used in cakes and with milk and I dont remember any acid taste, but since it's almost finished I'll buy something else. Also it is not skimmed, it has 22% fat and they added alkalinizing agents - maybe to mask the acid of the beans?
I'm willing to use additives or change some products since I have bought small quantities of everything but the powdered milk and the sunflower lecithin, whey proteins already in the house. Also I'm going to add from 5 to 10% of cocoa butter supposedly of high quality, which I ordered, and hopefully will also reduces the acid taste, while improving the texture. I'm also getting a 0,01g scale to properly weight 0,2g vanilla.
So the third attempt recipe will look like this: 20% hazelnuts paste, 30% allulose, 10% MCT oil, 10% cocoa butter, 12% milk powder, 7% cocoa powder, 9% whey isolate, 0,2% vanilla powder + 10ml water and let it dry one night.
As before, I'll check texture, taste and adjust. Hopefully the fourth attempt will be the last and I can then make a big batch
Any suggestion? I don't see alkalinizing agents being added in the commercial spreads, so why would I need one? Moreover they are already present in tiny quantity in the cocoa powder I used...
I hate anything "dark" and too natty, basically I want a healthy milk chocolate cream with a little hazelnuts flavor, stable at room temperature. I have studied the commercial products I like the most and done a couple of test batches of about 100g each. Every commercial product available here without sugar is basically garbage in taste, ingredients, texture or all of them. Making my own was the only viable alternative to eating a ton of sugar.
The ratios of the product I like the most are about the following (my estimation looking at label, tasting and educated guesses): 42% sugar, 25% hazelnuts, 11-12% seed oils, 9-10% powdered milk, 7% skim cocoa powder, 6% cocoa butter + dry cow butter, <1% soy lecithin. No natural or artificial flavours added. Total fat content 33%.
I wanted it less sweet and with more aroma, so I used 40% allulose (which should equal to 35% sugar in sweetness) and added real bourbon vanilla powder for flavoring, probably still too few. Replaced the awful seed oils with MCT oil, used lactose-free powdered milk (I'm also lactose-intolerant), and nothing else for the first attempt. It was a disaster! Not so much for the taste, but because the allulose didn't want to melt in any way. Added more oil, useless. Heating it in a glass jar on a water bath made things worse, like when chocolate crystalizes. I googled how to melt allulose, which is very similar to sugar and the only viable alternative to a conching machine at 50-60 degrees is to add water. And that worked! Strangely the cream didn't go crazy unlike chocolate, probably because everything was done at ambient temp.
In the second attempt I adjusted the recipe to be roughly 20% hazelnut paste, 35% allulose, 15% MCT oil, 15% powdered milk, 8% cocoa powder. And added some whey isolate proteins and about 1% sunflower lecithin, a little vanilla powder and 25ml water (on 100g batch) in the end. Now, the water was obviously too much and the texture was very soft (still better than some keto dung they sell), so I let it dry for one night without lid. Still soft but it improved a lot.
I'm posting here for two reasons, first sharing my (work in progress) recipes for other people who like the sweetest spreads but don't want the sugar. What I'm still having issues is the immediate aftertaste which is a bit ACID and the late aftertaste which is MILKY. The commercial cream I like has ZERO aftertaste. To reduce the milky aftertaste, I'm going to reduce the milk amount and compensate it with more whey isolate. For the acid I'm at a complete loss.
The nut cream (100% roasted hazelnuts perfectly milled) is high quality. The cocoa is just a leftover of Lindt cocoa powder sold in supermarkets. I have used in cakes and with milk and I dont remember any acid taste, but since it's almost finished I'll buy something else. Also it is not skimmed, it has 22% fat and they added alkalinizing agents - maybe to mask the acid of the beans?
I'm willing to use additives or change some products since I have bought small quantities of everything but the powdered milk and the sunflower lecithin, whey proteins already in the house. Also I'm going to add from 5 to 10% of cocoa butter supposedly of high quality, which I ordered, and hopefully will also reduces the acid taste, while improving the texture. I'm also getting a 0,01g scale to properly weight 0,2g vanilla.
So the third attempt recipe will look like this: 20% hazelnuts paste, 30% allulose, 10% MCT oil, 10% cocoa butter, 12% milk powder, 7% cocoa powder, 9% whey isolate, 0,2% vanilla powder + 10ml water and let it dry one night.
As before, I'll check texture, taste and adjust. Hopefully the fourth attempt will be the last and I can then make a big batch
Any suggestion? I don't see alkalinizing agents being added in the commercial spreads, so why would I need one? Moreover they are already present in tiny quantity in the cocoa powder I used...