Forum Activity for @crackedcitrine

best surface for tempering chocolate

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

In my super small scale bean-to-bar tempering, I like using a large pyrex glass bowl and silicone spatula to do my equivalent of "tabling."  I put the bowl in the refrigerator to get it mostly cold, then pour a small portion of chocolate directly from the grinder into the bowl. If the bowl is too cold and everything solidifies, I add more chocolate from the grinder. If I initially used too much chocolate and it never gets down to thickening temperature, I put the bowl in the fridge for a couple minutes, then stir, repeating until I get the temp/consistency I need.  Then, I add the rest of the grinder chocolate to the bowl and start molding.

I'll only do this with a new bean origin to initially get tempered chocolate. I'll use a seed method with future batches of the same beans. I'm a big fan of using a hard cheese grater (like for Parmesan) to make my seed - finely grated melts much easier than larger pieces.

Problem cooling and or tempering

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

The only hint I've found is to use very rigid molds, like the polycarbonate molds that are difficult/expensive to get custom made.  For the vacuum molded plastics, that seem to be what you're using, I've heard thicker vacu-formed plastics tend to reduce the severity of the release marks, but still don't eliminate them.

If you have the opportunity to remake the molds, a rougher surface (fewer large smooth places) should hide the release marks much better.

For my own bars, I've decided to live with the release marks. If I ever make enough profit, I might upgrade to polycarbonate molds for my bars. But, for now, my customers don't seem to mind, and the marks seem to get minimized after packaging (the rubbing against the package hides most of the marks) 

Problem cooling and or tempering

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Those look like release/separation marks, not tempering issues. From my very limited experience, they tend to pop up on larger bars made from thinner plastic.

Check out this video for more info from someone much more experienced than me12 Tempering philosophy (Chocolate Alchemy's tempering video). Around 15:26, he talks about release marks.

How to make chocolate "softer"

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

I'll definitely give the milk fat a try as a learning experience and to keep all my options open - thanks for the suggestion. But I'm still hoping for non-milk suggestions as there's milk allergies in my family (there's probably not enough protein in the milk fats to trigger an allergy, but that's not something I'll take a chance on), and having a 3 item ingredient (beans, cocoa butter, sugar) really calls to me.

I'll plan on changing one variable on every batch to see what happens. I'm hopeful I can figure out whatever I did in my first batch that made them so much softer.

How to make chocolate "softer"

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Thanks for the tip gap, but is that advice geared more toward a milk chocolate rather than a dark chocolate?

A quick search says ghee has 0.5 - 1.0% water content. Is that low enough that you add it straight without the need for other additives like lecithin? I vaguely remember hearing chocolate is around that range, but I can't find it in writing at the moment.

How to make chocolate "softer"

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

I'm still fairly new to making chocolate and extremely low volume, so please forgive any lack of proper terminology. And thank you to everyone that's already helped me tremendously as I read through older posts here.

I'm getting feedback that my 65% dark chocolate bars are too "hard", meaning they take too much effort to bite through, and even breaking the bars apart takes a significant amount of effort. I thought this was normal (many of the commercial bars in that 65% range seem similar) until I found a bar from my very first bean to bar batch from almost a year ago, and it is significantly easier to bite through.

My only recipe so far for bean to bar is for a 65% dark, using 35% sugar, 60% winnowed nibs, 5% cocoa butter (no lecithin since I haven't needed it for viscosity reasons). Assuming 50% cocoa butter in the nibs, that gives me a total cocoa butter content of 35%. My batch size is around 2.5 pounds, running in a home-sized Premier tilting melanger for about 36 hours (I haven't intentionally experimented with different grinding times yet - variation is purely a matter of convenience). The bars go into the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes until they start pulling away from the molds. They are removed from the molds and sit at room temp 15-60 minutes before packaging. They are stored in a wine refrigerator at about 60 degrees F.

My first batch seems like it is grittier, so maybe I didn't grind it as long, and maybe that's why it is softer. It was also a different bean source, and probably a much lighter roast.

I've considered the possibility that I'm overtempering, but I'm not finding detailed advice on how to check for that other than "once the melted chocolate starts to thicken" (I can recognize and correct that) or using an expensive temper meter.

Any advice on how to create easier to eat chocolate?

Thanks,
David