I'm looking to start using colored cocoa butters from Chef Rubber. It seems they offer many lines of colors including Artisan, Decor Jewel, Natural and Pearl. Does anyone have any experience using these? In your opinions which line of colors would be the best for bon bons. I especially like the colors used at Williamdeanchocolates.com
updated by @george-trejo: 04/09/15 09:16:04

I use their Artisan and Jewel lines. The Natural has a certain appeal, but since it is made from natural foods, it also as a taste and aroma I don't care for. Also, the colors are very limited. The Pearl is nice, but you need to back it with another color to make it pop. I spent many months mostly finding out what didn't work, rather than what did work. It is all a trial and error game. Good luck.

I am starting out & want to incorporate colour into my chocolates. I want to be able to both pain & airbrush. Which is the best way to go, pre coloured cocoa butter or buying cocoa butter & then colouring it yourself. If the latter then then which is best, the liquid, gel or powdered colour. Sorry for all the questions, any help would be appreciated

Hey George! Like Ruth said...I too have had a LOT of failures when we first attempted to use colored cocoa butter for our molds. You just have to keep trying. We airbrush some of our molds...it took us quite a while to get all of the tools and things necessary to make our airbrush food safe and then learning to do it was a messy but fun thing to play with. I also do some molds with a toothbrush... by flicking the bristles. (That is when I just don't want to use the airbrush) and then I do some by finger painting... with gloves of course... basically smearing the colored cocoa butter inside each cavity. I have had great luck with chef rubber colored cocoa butters. We use the artisan collection (primary colors, black, and white)...but will start making my own colored cocoa butter soon because we always blend our colors anyway. Chef Rubber is a great source to use for many tools and ingredients.

Hi everyone, I am a new business in Australia. I to want to start using colored cocoa butter to decorate my molds. I have purchased many items in the US as the options here are very limited. The problem is that the cost of getting them here makes for quite expensive outcomes. I wish to make my own colored cocoa butters and am seeking out advise and instruction on the best way to do this. I imagine that I could melt cocoa butter to 45 C, add oil based color and table temper it. Then I can have a quantity of various colors on hand in temper. Does this sound about right? Are liquid oil based colors better than powder? Will I be able to get the strong colors that I see in bottles on the Chef Rubber website? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Lynn,Melt your cocoa butter - temperature is not terribly important - place in a beaker with powdered oil suitable colours and blitz with an immersion blender. The colours will be intense enough as long as you add enough powder - but they will be transparent. In order to make them opaque you need to add titanium dioxide (white powdered cocoa butter colour) - but it will mean that the colour changes somewhat.If you want to mix the colours on a slab, instead of with an immersion blender, then you need to grind the powder with the cocoa butter using the back of your offset spatula - if you don't mix them sufficiently you will end up with streaky mixtures.I don't bother to temper them.So that I don't have to clean the immersion blender and beaker until I'm done, I usually start by making white, then yellow, orange, followed by red, then purple, blue and the greens.If you look about half way down this post you'll see the chef in Belgium mixing together some powdered colour with cocoa butter - and his suggestions on making the colours better. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/112523-chocolate-course/page__view__findpost__p__1532682


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www.eztemper.com

www.thechocolatedoctor.ca

Kerry:Thanks for pointing out this eGullet forum - a number of VERY useful tips here.Lynn - all the basic information regarding how to make the colors you are looking for is in this post. What you will need to do is locate a source of oil-soluble food-safe colors approved by the Australian equivalent of the FDA.:: Clay


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clay - http://www.thechocolatelife.com/clay/

Hey Kerry! I am with Clay...Thanks for posting the forum. It helps a lot! I love how you can talk to anyone for information...and it seems that everyone has a different useful tip. It could be the smallest thing that makes a huge difference for me! I appreciate it!

Kerry and ClayThank you so much for your invaluable information!! I will give it a try! I think this forum is so fantastic and that I may have just found some new best friends in the chocolate industry!

Chef Rubberdid a custom design for me and I was not happy with the results. They should have told me the design should have been enlarged for a larger truffle so you could tell what it was.Their stock designs are wonderful! Great resource for lots of items.

I've only used the Chef Rubber colors so can't give an opinion on others. But, I did have a problem with the red colors for a while. Every time I used it, lost 90% of the molded chocolates. Very frustrating to say the least. I don't know if the batch was bad, but I tried several things to get it to work with no luck.

A couple of months ago, I ordered two new bottles of red and they have worked great.

I ordered some new colors and they were a little strange. They seemed thinner, and had a really strong cocoa fragrance. All the original bottles I ordered just had kind of a neutral smell. They have worked OK, so can't really complain.

It does take a lot of trial and error with this stuff. I've found that if they are overheated, it will mess it up. Just my experience. I melt them in the microwave on medium and shake the bottles a lot.

Chef Rubber is great for a lot of items, but they are a little overpriced on molds I've noticed.

They always send me a proof. If they didn't, ask them to in the future.

I have worked a lot with Chef Rubber for custom transfer sheets and colored cocoa butter. One thing I learned is that they purchase cocoa butter twice a year and they are different so that will impact the colored cocoa butters in one way or another. Also, if you send in an image with Pantone colors associated, have them send you a sample of that color and then a matching color just to the image. To be clear, sometimes the Pantone color you have selected does not come out the way you want it to, but they can match the color. It is important to proof your images and colors and to communicate clearly with them. They do not assume anything, and you shouldn't either.