How can I make my chocolate solid?

Hi all,

I have tried to make milk chocolate about four times now using 2 different recipes. I am very happy with the taste of the chocolate, but the problem is- it will not become solid! I ahve placed batches in the fridge for hours ( even overnight) but when it come out, its still in a viscous liquid state.

For the ingredients I use: butter, icing sugar, cocoa powder, milk powder, and vanilla essence

I have studied chocolate wrappers and most contacin emulsifiers- could this be the missing link?

Any ideas what the problem might be?

You're not making chocolate, your making some sort of frosting at best, but it sounds more like chocolate flavored butter.

Chocolate contains CACAO butter, not milk butter

You're using butter which is soft and has a lower melting point, cacao butter is solid, so when it's room temperature it is naturally hard. You'll never get butter to turn hard.

what you have is a buttercream icing that will work nicely on a cake. It isn't even close to chocolate.

Chocolate is a suspension of tiny particles of cocoa solids, sugar, and vanilla in cocoa butter, not real butter. The emulsifiers listed on bar wrappers are actually NOT emulsifying anything. They are actually coating the solid particles and allowing them to slide easier through the fat. It's a manufacturer's way of making the chocolate less expensive to produce, as it makes it more fluid without adding cocoa butter. Having said that, forget about the so-called emusifiers as they won't help you anyway.

Hope that helps explain things a bit better.

Thank you for the responses. That indeed does clear things up! I used butter because I could not get cocoa butter. I live in Zimbabwe, and I have done a little researching over the past few days and have found out that we actually do not make/ have cocoa butter in Zimbabwe at all.Are there any less complex fats I can substitute for cocoa butter?

No. Technically cocoa butter is the one ingredient that must exist in ALL chocolate - whether it's milk, dark, or white. Cocoa butter is the medium that suspends all of the little particles of solids, and has properties that other fats don't have.

Sorry. Without cocoa butter you don't have chocolate.

I see. thanks for the help.

You can use other fats - they are called CBEs (cocoa butter equivalents) or CBRs (cocoa butter replacements) and cocoa powder to make what's called "compound" "chocolate" (or coating). Legally in most countries (US, Europe, etc.) you can't call it chocolate because you're not using cocoa butter, you're using other fats.

you don't have chocolate but you could make a compound with acocoa butter replacement but it is not named chocolate it would be a "chocolatecompound" you would not need to temper it and in my opinion the taste would not be a match to chocolate the texter would bedifferentto