adding flavorings - help needed

I haven't gotten a level where I am producing the chocolate in my kitchen.... rather my homemade chocolates are just melted down dark chocolate blends.So I am a definite beginner.

My question is how do I add almond or peppermint to my melted chocolate? Most extracts I have seen (clubhouse etc) have water and alcohol. Unfortunately, I already learned what that does to cooking chocolate! I did a search for peppermint oil or almond oil and all I could find is essential oil for aromatherapy! hehe What do I do / buy?

Thank you

Merry Christmas / Joyeux Noel

We use LorAnn oils.Several stores sell them, or you could get them online. http://shop.lorannoils.com/chocolates/super-strength-flavors/1-dram...

They are much, much cheaper than the "Super Healthy, Super Duper, Super Commissioned" essential oils.

I couldn't speak to if one is better than the other.

Note: some are oils, some are flavors with water & alcohol.

thanks - since water and alcohol turns melted down chocolate into flaky hard mud . ... how could extracts with water or alcohol be used if at all?

if you use Organic essential oils you can be confident they will be food safe, with no traces of pesticides or chemicals. 

your alcohol based flavors will be fine.  use oil soluable if you can find them, but if not, alcohol based will work just fine.

You don't need to use the alcohol ones. The alcohol is added to make the essential oil water soluble when used in other cooking applications.

Chocolate is a fat mass which means the flavoring doesn't need to be soluble.

Actually, the alcohol is there because alcohol extracts flavors much differently than does water.  It's a much more effective solvent, and as such the types of flavors you get with alcohol extractions are very different than what you find with water extractions.

You will need to decide for yourself which is better.  Alcohol based flavors are used every day in large scale chocolate manufacture.

That is really neat. I had always heard to use oil based flavorings/colorings for chocolate. I'll play with alcohol flavorings. This will be fun. Thanks for the insight Sebastian.

Just make sure you're not using water soluble flavors - sometimes folks get mixed up and use the two interchangably..

No, the original extraction might have been by steam distillation or expression. While things like vanilla will often be extracted by alcohol or Co2.