Adventures with Colored Cocoa Butter

Robby Booth
@robby-booth
07/26/11 09:43:34PM
6 posts
I'm having a bit of an issue with colored cocoa butter.I'm splattering it on a chocolate bar mold, letting it set (about 20 minutes), then filling the mold with tempered dark chocolate.
The room is about 72 degrees, humidity is 35%, and I have a fan blowing in the room.
When the bar releases from the mold, some of the cocoa butter stays stuck to the mold. (See attached photo).
I also did a control test with a mold that did not have cocoa butter and the chocolate bar released perfectly and had a good shine.
Anyone have any ideas?

updated by @robby-booth: 04/10/15 04:00:58PM
deborah2
@deborah2
07/26/11 11:56:48PM
25 posts
What temp is your cocoa butter when you are splattering it? It looks like it might not be warm enough.
Omar Forastero
@omar-forastero
07/27/11 07:53:25AM
86 posts

firstly, cocoa butter must be tempered before splattered.

This might work: pour a little bit of chocolate in the mold, tap it/vibrate until every pcs has a a thin layer of chocolate in it. Then mold the rest of the chocolate. The chocolate might be too cold too.

Robby Booth
@robby-booth
07/27/11 09:43:56AM
6 posts

Thank you everyone for your comments. I'm not certain what the temperature of the cocoa butter was, I warmed the bottle and shook it up to "temper it." The cocoa butter solidified in the mold after about 15 minutes, then I poured 32C tempered dark chocolate into the mold.

Could the colored cocoa butter be out of temper? I didn't have a problem with it before, so I'm wondering if somewhere along the way, all the continued melting and shaking of the cocoa butter bottle has brought it out of temper?

Although, if the cocoa butter is out of temper, I don't know why most of it releases without a problem. Seems like if it is not in temper, then none of it should release.

Andrea B
@andrea-bauer
07/27/11 09:50:51PM
92 posts

There could be a couple of of problems here. The splatters of cocoa butter might be too thick. Your molds would release without problems in the areas with it is not too thick. Your cocoa butter may be out of temper. If you melted all of the cocoa butter out (with nothing solid left in the container) it could be out of temper and simply shaking it will not temper it. If it is all melted out you need to re-temper as you would chocolate. Also, remember that, like chocolate,cocoa buttercan be over tempered (over crystalized). I am no expert in working with colored cocoa butter but keep practicing and you'll figure out what methods work best for you.

Mark Heim
@mark-heim
07/29/11 09:00:31AM
101 posts

Along with watching the temper of your cocoa butter, also look at the temperature of your molds. Try to warm them up to within adegrees or two of your temper. If too cold, even a good temper can be ruined, especially since you have a thin coat.

When tempering cocoa butter watch the temperature. For chocolates, rule of thumb is the more other fats/oils in the chocolate, the lower the tempering temperature, with dark being higher than milk, and milk higher than white. A gianduja tempers down to room temp. You would think then that pure cocoa butter would be the highest, but it's lower. Reason here isyou can't just look at the fat(s) in your system, but other solids. With pure cocoa butter you don't have the sugar/cocoa particulates to help induce seeding.

I've had a lot of luck using your "shake it in the bottle" tempering. I warm the bottle in hot water until about half is melted. This works better than a microwave since hot water melts outside to in, leaving center cool and hard.I getthe melted portionto about 105F, but stillthat solid center. Then I shake it until the solid center cools down the melted portion to tempering temp. The seed coming from the unmelted center. Didn't take much practice to get it working consistent.

Richard Foley
@richard-foley
07/31/11 01:40:06AM
48 posts
Very simple, if it stuck to the mold, it was not tempered. It is the cocoa butter in fact in all chocolate that requires the tempering. Cocoa is a very complex fat. Tempering in a bottle, is not really a well recognized method, although it can be done if you have enough experience to understand when and how to get the mixture tempered.
Cocoa butter on it's own actually will temper at a lower temperature than chocolate, and become very foggy in color as it crystalized, so with food color added this makes it even harder to tell when tempered. Remember, tempering basics, always....time, temperature, movement.
Always be an expert at tempering when using any cocoa buttter based product and once that skill is mastered you set, along with your chocolate creation.

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