Hi Sebastion,
the milk powder is whole milk powder from medallion - here is the link:
http://www.medallionmilk.com/foodWholeMilk.php
I've started another batch today and I'm going to use the same ratios and if the same thing happens I will take a photo and post it so you can see what we mean.
thanks for your help:)
Thanks Brad - our dark has turned out beautifully every time and the only thing we did differently in the process was to add the whole milk powder (dry) once the nibs were at the paste stage. So we thought it must be the fat in the milk not emulsifying with the cacao butter and we started researching how to emulsify milk fat and cacao butter and only found lecithin as a likely candidate.
But - correct me if I'm wrong - what you are saying is that the milk fat will never liquify - so possibly we did not process it long enough - in your experience how long does it take once you add the milk powder?
I tried 2 different ways - both unsuccessful:
1: 45% nibs, 30% sugar, 20% milk powder, 5% cacao butter (Total fat 32.5%)
2: 39%nibs, 30% sugar, 20%milk powder, 11%cacao butter (Total fat 35.5%)
Our milk powder is whole milk powder - 3.25% butterfat - ( when reconstituted it is 8g of fat per 30g serving =25% fat) we think
We thought it would eventually emulsify if we let it run in the grinder and after 72 hours it seemed almost there but after taking it off it continued to separate. We did a test using an immersion blender to see if we could get it to come together and we tried running it through the tempering machine, but no luck.
we have tried a few different methods to introduce whole milk powder at different stages of grinding but it doesn't ever completely emulsify - we are trying not to use soya lecithin and know that other bean to bar operations have had success without it - any suggestions??
