dark chocolate

Sugar-free chocolate: why it doesn’t work (yet)

~ Amber Latner ~ 2 Comments
Stevia plant
Stevia plant

I’m interrupting your regularly scheduled gianduja blog series to bring you this important public service announcement.

Apparently a UK firm has developed a way to eliminate the bitter aftertaste of chocolate sweetened with stevia. This is very cool news for chocolate lovers who can’t (or won’t) consume sugar.

To date, sugar-avoiders have had very few options when it came to chocolate. Most of the sugar-free chocolate on the market relies on sugar alcohols (erythritol, xylitol, mannitol, etc.) for its sweetness. Sugar alcohols are notorious for causing GI distress in some people, making chocolates sweetened with them not worth the discomfort for those affected. But stevia, an all-natural calorie free sweetener, doesn’t cause GI issues and doesn’t affect blood glucose levels the way some artificial sweeteners are purported to do.

That said, stevia tastes terrible in chocolate. I’ve tried adding it to unsweetened chocolate several times, and on a good day the results taste like aluminum.

Which is unfortunate, because I really WANTED to like stevia-sweetened chocolate. Not because I worry about my sugar intake, but because I grew up eating a lot of stevia (health-obsessed family + diabetic parent = lots of weird food in the house) and have grown to appreciate its gentler, lingering sweetness in foods like oatmeal or plain yogurt. It’s the perfect sweetener for coffee. So why not chocolate?

It turns out, the answer to that question is complicated. One of the interesting things I’ve learned while working for a local small-batch chocolate maker is that sugar does more for chocolate than just sweeten it. It also affects chocolate’s viscosity, texture and flavor intensity.

Sugar’s effect on chocolate’s viscosity:

Adding sugar to chocolate reduces the chocolate’s relative cocoa butter content, which means adding sugar will thicken your chocolate. Cocoa nibs are about 50% cocoa butter, and most chocolate makers add additional cocoa butter to facilitate molding and enhance texture. But add 30% sugar to that chocolate and your total cocoa butter percentage will fall significantly. This leads to thicker chocolate that many chocolatiers may find unsuitable for enrobing confections.

Sugar’s effect on chocolate’s texture:

Conching machine or melangeur
Photo credit: Mark Chamberlain via Rochester City Newspaper

Also, part of the art of making chocolate is figuring out the right time to add the sugar. The cocoa beans are ground by granite rollers in a melangeur for several days, and sugar is added at some point along the way. Added too late, and — depending on the chocolate maker’s refining equipment — large sugar particles may result in a gritty texture (interestingly, Taza Chocolate leaves large sugar particles in its chocolate on purpose, and the texture of their chocolate is quite unique).

Side note: one thing I’m still trying to figure out is what happens if sugar is added too EARLY in the grinding/refining process? Why don’t chocolate makers just add sugar at the very beginning, as soon as the nibs have liquefied in the melangeur? Is it possible for sugar particles to become TOO small?

Sugar’s effect on the intensity of chocolate’s flavor:

Generally, in dark chocolate anyway, the lower the percentage of sugar, the higher the percentage of cocoa mass. At least theoretically. The thing is that most chocolate makers also add additional cocoa butter to their chocolate, and the “cocoa solids” percentage stated on chocolate bar wrappers includes the combined weight of the cocoa mass AND the added cocoa butter. So a 70% dark chocolate could be 30% sugar and 70% cocoa mass (known in the industry as “two-ingredient chocolate”). Or it could be 30% sugar, 20% cocoa butter, and only 50% cocoa mass. Suddenly that chocolate isn’t sounding so dark, is it?

Earlier in this post you learned that sugar makes chocolate thicker by reducing its relative cocoa butter percentage, and chocolate makers often add extra cocoa butter in order to thin it out again (and sometimes to improve its texture). Given that cocoa butter has very little actual chocolate flavor, the more additional cocoa butter in a chocolate, the less intense its flavor.

Enrobed chocolate bonbon“Couverture” chocolate — the chocolate used by chocolatiers to make bonbon shells and enrobe truffles —  by definition must contain over 31% added cocoa butter. So that means that a 65% dark couverture chocolate is likely made from 35% sugar, at least 31% added cocoa butter and, at the very most, only 34% cocoa mass (most likely less because most cocoa makers also add soy lecithin). 34% cocoa mass does not an intense chocolate make.

So as you can see, sugar interacts with other ingredients in chocolate in complex ways by displacing cocoa butter and affecting texture. Chocolate makers have been trying to tweak processes and recipes for hundreds of years. Replacing sugar with a sweetener that has a completely different chemical composition is complicated, requiring multiple adjustments along the way, and a lot of trial and error.

It will take a lot of thought, time and experimentation before chocolate makers figure out how to make great chocolate sweetened only with stevia, but I’m guessing it can be done. I’m curious which chocolate maker will be the first to make that leap.

Dark chocolate as a cough suppressant?

~ Amber Latner
Dark Chocolate and Chili Peppers
Dark Chocolate and Chili Peppers

According to a 2004 study in the UK, the amount of theobromine in a typical 2.5 oz dark chocolate bar works better than codeine to suppress the vagus nerve activity that triggers coughing.

In the study, participants were able to ingest significantly more capsaicin (the chemical that gives spicy chilies their kick) before coughing after they had taken 1,000 mg theobromine, when compared to those given a placebo.

Theobromine is one of the nervous system stimulants in chocolate. It dilates blood vessels, reduces blood pressure, increases heart rate and has a mild diuretic effect on humans*.

And apparently it’s also a cough suppressant! Sweet.

* Theobromine does not have such a pleasant effect on dogs. Be careful never to leave your chocolate out around dogs.

 

Using transfer sheets to decorate truffles

Chocolate truffles decorated with transfer sheets
~ Amber Latner

Dark Chocolate Truffles Decorated with Transfer Sheets

Last weekend I spent Sunday afternoon holed up at Union Kitchen with a professional chocolate maker and a former chocolatier*.

The mission: make chocolate truffles out of Undone Chocolate.

The plan: make a ganache out of Undone’s salted 72% chocolate bars, pour into a frame and let it cool in the industrial refrigerator, then cut it into squares and dip it in tempered Undone Chocolate.

The twist: decorate the truffles with chocolate transfer sheets.

Chocolate transfer sheets are like temporary tattoos for truffles: you press them on when the chocolate is in liquid form, and when the chocolate hardens and you peel them off and the pattern of the colored cocoa butter remains on the surface of the truffle as if you’ve used a stencil and spray paint. (Non-toxic spray paint, naturally).

Transfer sheets can also be used with specialty molds. We actually did consider using molds for these truffles but quickly realized it was unworkable — the chocolate was simply too thick for small molds and wouldn’t spread evenly into the corners.

Why is Undone Chocolate so thick? Well, that’s just what happens when you make two-ingredient chocolate. Most chocolate makers add additional cocoa butter to the other ingredients (primarily cocoa mass and sugar) before grinding and refining them. Undone skips this step. The resulting chocolate is potent, thick and intense, and it won’t easily spread into the crevices of molds (this is also a characteristic of “high viscosity” chocolate).

Anyway… we opted for hand dipping the ganache squares in chocolate, and we added some additional cocoa butter to it to make the enrobing process easier. This turned out to be a good call. The extra cocoa butter produced a couverture-like chocolate that tempered well and left our bonbons with nice thin shells.

Using transfer sheets to decorate chocolate truffles

I cut the transfer sheets into squares and pressed one onto each enrobed truffle while the chocolate shell was still wet. Chocolatiers with fancy equipment skip this part — they can cut the entire slab of ganache at once using a guitar cutter**, after which they send the pre-cut ganache squares through an enrobing machine (it’s like a chocolate shower) hooked up to their tempering machine.

In any event, the transfer sheets worked beautifully. I recommend them to home chocolatiers attempting to create professional-looking truffles without colored cocoa butter or fancy molds. I bought these particular transfer sheets from Chef Rubber, but you can buy small quantities of them cheaply on Amazon.

 *Chocolate makers are the people that roast raw cocoa beans and grind them into chocolate. Chocolatiers take a chocolate maker’s product and turn it into confections, like truffles.

Confectionary guitar
Confectionery guitar

 

**Btw… that guitar cutter is a $2000 piece of equipment. And tempering machines with enrobing attachments can cost ten times that. Of all the barriers to entry faced by aspiring chocolatiers, the initial capital investment in equipment is probably the most difficult to surmount. But I digress.

 

Truffles with dark chocolate mint ganache

Molded dark chocolate bonbons
~ Amber Latner

Molded Dark Chocolate Bonbons

A couple of years ago I bought an indoor herb garden as a birthday present for my husband. We grow basil, cilantro, dill, parsley and mint, but mint is the one we seem to use least frequently — so I was excited when I realized I could use all that mint to flavor my ganache.

I won’t get into too much detail about how I made these because the process was very similar to how I made the lemon ganache truffles a couple of weeks ago. The only difference was that this time I infused the cream with mint while the cream was still cold. Being short on time, I thought it would be more efficient to blend them up together in my Magic Bullet.

Fresh mint whipped cream
Fresh Mint Whipped Cream

Well… it turns out you can make really fluffy whipped cream in a blender! I had no idea. Green whipped cream too. Whoops.

Despite this accident, it turned out beautifully. I used 70.4% dark Callebaut. Not too sweet, and the ganache had just the faintest hint of mint.

At the last minute I second-guessed myself and added a drop of peppermint oil. I wish I’d skipped it. The subtlety of the mint had been refreshing, but the peppermint oil made these truffles taste like Andes Candies — which are tasty, but not very original. I’d really hoped the fresh mint flavor would come through.

Whisked Chocolate Mint GanacheSigh.

Still, the truffles came out so shiny and pretty — I couldn’t have been happier with the result (aesthetically, anyway).

Plus, now I know how to make green whipped cream in a blender. Which will come in handy… never?

Review: chocolate delivery services

Cococlectic Bean-to-Bar Box
~ Amber Latner ~ 2 Comments

Cococlectic box with Cao Chocolates

I lived in New York City for 12 years… and in New York, everything you can imagine can be delivered to your doorstep at any time, day or night. Online delivery services were such a staple of my life (breakfast delivery, dry cleaning delivery, grocery delivery) that the absence of even decent restaurant delivery services here (Seamless, get your act together!) made my move to D.C. more traumatic than it should have been.

But recently I discovered the holy grail of online delivery services: craft chocolate delivery. Several new companies are now providing chocoholics everywhere with doorstep delivery of hard-to-find, small-batch bars from craft chocolate makers all over the world.

I immediately signed up for two: Cococlectic and Cocoa Runners. Here’s what my experience has been like so far.

Cococlectic is a San Francisco based company that markets itself as a “craft bean-to-bar club.” Members receive four different bars of dark chocolate from one chocolate maker each month, with prices starting at $35.99 for one shipment (which comes with a $20 gift certificate towards a monthly subscription plan).

  • Cococlectic is for pure dark chocolate lovers only! They currently don’t provide the option of receiving milk chocolate or chocolate bars with stuff in them (inclusions).

    Cao Single Origin Chocolates
    Cao Single Origin Chocolates
  • They’re marketing themselves as a way for curious chocolate connoisseurs to find out about new, little-known or hard-to-find American craft chocolate makers. They do the leg-work and vetting, providing customers with a curated selection of bars.
  • The cost is reasonable, and I like being able to buy a no-strings-attached gift box without committing to a monthly subscription.
  • My gift box came VERY fast (in just a couple of days) and included four bars of different single origin chocolates from one chocolate maker: Cao Chocolates, from Miami, Florida. Since I’d never heard of Cao, Cococlectic did deliver on its promise of introducing me to a new chocolate maker that I probably wouldn’t have found on my own.

Cocoa Runners is a UK based company that delivers globally. Cocoa Runners costs about the same as Cococlectic (~$30 a month, plus a ~$5 shipping fee if you live outside the UK).

  • Unlike Cococlectic, Cocoa Runners doesn’t seem to provide the option to buy a single box… it appears you have to sign up for a monthly subscription to receive your first shipment. However, their subscriptions are cancellable at any time, so it’s not much of a commitment.
  • Cocoa Runners is more customizable: you can choose to receive either a mix of dark and milk chocolate, or only dark chocolate (they carry dark milk chocolate, which I adore, so I was very tempted to check the “milk chocolate” box). And when you sign up, Cocoa Runners will even ask you about your preferences for inclusions — do you like chocolate with nibs? berries? bacon?
  • Unlike Cococlectic, Cocoa Runners appears to provide customers with bars from multiple chocolate makers in each shipment.
  • Shipment is a tad slower than Cococlectic. Cocoa Runners ships the third week of each month, so I haven’t received my first box yet. But I’ll let you know what’s in it when it arrives.

First attempt: ganache-filled chocolates

Molded dark chocolate truffles
~ Amber Latner ~ 5 Comments

Molded dark chocolate bonbons

Over the weekend I tried my hand at making molded chocolates for the first time. I was dying to use my new chocolate tempering machine (more on that in another post), so when I found myself with a whole free Sunday and a sweet tooth, I decided to go for it.

I whipped up some lemon ganache, poured it into a piping bag, tempered a pound of deZaan 64% dark couverture chocolate, and got to work (for full instructions, scroll to the bottom of this post).

Molded dark chocolate bonbons

Here’s what I learned:

  1. One pound of chocolate is NOT a lot to work with when making bonbons. I barely had enough chocolate for one mold sheet.
  2. It’s very challenging to get the chocolate out of the tempering machine and into a piping bag without letting the chocolate get too cold (and therefore thick and hard to work with). I’m still figuring out the best way to do this — suggestions are welcome.
  3. Make sure you have a good (wide) spatula or scraper on hand, as well as some kind of wide receptacle to catch the chocolate runoff (a clean sheet pan might be perfect for this). If you try to pour chocolate from your mold tray into a 12″ mixing bowl, you’ll leave half of it on the floor (um, yes, that happened).
  4. Put down some newspaper! Or a tarp! And wear an apron, for the love of god. Or a hazmat suit. You will get dirty.
  5. Work fast so your chocolate stays close to 90 degrees. If you let the chocolate cool too much, you’ll end up with very thick chocolate shells and less room for ganache.
  6. Clear plastic molds (rather than opaque silicon trays) have the advantage of allowing you to see when the chocolates are ready to come out of the fridge. To check them, take a peak at the bottom of the mold. When the chocolate has hardened, it will visibly pull away from the plastic (this is one of the many useful things I learned while helping out at Undone Chocolate).
  7. Don’t be like me and forget to tap the air bubbles out of the molds (whoops).

    Making molded dark chocolate bonbons
    What a mess!
  8. Don’t be like me and wait too long to scrape the excess chocolate off the top of the mold tray. If you let it harden on the tray, it will be a lot harder to remove the chocolates. Trust me on this one.

Instructions for making molded chocolates:

  1. Fill a piping bag (or a ziplock bag with the corner cut off) with tempered chocolate and pipe it into the molds (fill them completely).  Then flip the mold tray upside down, letting the excess chocolate drip into a large, clean bin or tray (you can remelt it later).
  2. Scrape the front of the tray clean with a spatula, leaving a thin coating of chocolate inside each mold. Tap the tray (right-side up) on the counter a few times to remove air bubbles. Flip it upside down and stick it in the fridge for a few minutes to set.
  3. Once the chocolate shell has hardened, pipe ganache into the molds. Leave a few millimeters at the top — it’s better to under fill than overfill.
  4. Seal the molds with a thin layer of chocolate (you may need to gently reheat your chocolate at this point, or temper a new batch if you’ve run out).
  5. Repeat step 2.
  6. Gently flip your tray upside down onto a dry surface. The chocolates should drop right out. Wearing latex gloves for this step will prevent finger prints (if you care). If necessary, trim the edges with a sharp knife.
  7. Try one! Or, um… four, if you’re like me. But who’s counting.

Anyway — I hope you have a great time making your own chocolates. Please let me know how it goes!

Playing with texture in chocolate

Nendo dark chocolate bonbons
~ Amber Latner
Nendo Chocolatexture line
Nendo Chocolatexture line

Yesterday my husband forwarded me an article from Slate that profiled Nendo, a Japanese design house that has gone into the chocolate business.

Nendo’s chocolate, not yet available in the U.S., has a brilliant design team behind it. The company produces some of the most inspired and unique confections I’ve seen.

But design is only part of what makes Nendo unique. The company’s entire approach is one of reimagining the chocolate eating experience. For example, their “chocolatexture” line includes a box of solid, unfilled chocolates that look like truffles. Instead of coming in a variety of flavors like most truffles, these chocolates come in a variety of textures, the idea being that texture is a facet of taste. By putting the focus squarely on texture, Nendo is asking us to rethink how we taste chocolate.

Nendo mix-and-match flavor vials
Nendo mix-and-match flavor vials

Another inventive creation by Nendo: these empty chocolate shells and their little vials of flavored fillings — a kind of create-your-own truffle. The Slate article points out that this concept does kill the fun of biting into a truffle without knowing what’s inside, but I like their idea of creating an interactive chocolate experience.

I only hope some day Nendo Chocolates will be easier to come by in the States.

 

Intro to Ganache: getting started

Dark chocolate ganache
~ Amber Latner

Last night I made these chocolate chip peanut butter bars from Chocolate Covered Katie for my stepson. Then I thought, why not also whip up some chocolate ganache to spread over the top, like frosting? Because, chocolate.

I used the ganache recipe I’ve always known and loved: equal parts heavy cream and chopped-up 70% dark chocolate (I used half a cup of each). Heat the cream until it starts to steam, pour over the chopped-up chocolate, DON’T STIR, cover and wait for 5 minutes. Then uncover, whisk up a storm, and voila — beautiful chocolate sauce that will set up to a super-thick frosting consistency after 30 minutes in the fridge.

Spoonful of chocolate ganache

Let’s just say my stepson was very, very psyched about dessert last night.

Enrobed chocolate bonbon

I love ganache. I’ve been making it a lot recently. It’s a great way to use up the leftover chocolate I bought for my tempering experiments. Mostly I end up stirring all this ganache into whipped cream (I have a half-pint whipped cream dispenser, which changed my life) to make lazy-woman’s chocolate mousse. But lately I’ve been thinking about using ganache as the filling for my first attempt at dipped chocolate truffles.

I know the ganache used to fill truffles is thicker than the stuff I make for frosting desserts (truffles are typically filled with a 2:1 chocolate-to-cream ratio ganache). But I’m really confused about one thing. Even a thick ganache still has a good amount of cream in it. Cream needs to be refrigerated. Why don’t truffles filled with ganache need to be refrigerated too?

I did a little digging and found some very helpful information on the Paul Bradford Sugarcraft School website, which I’ve summarized below. But please check out the school’s website for a more thorough explanation.

Why does ganache spoil?

Ganache goes bad because moisture in the cream promotes microbial growth. A typical ganache lasts about two weeks in the fridge, or two days on the counter. However, while all ganaches contain some water from the cream, most of that water is chemically unavailable because it’s bound up with other ingredients.  It’s the amount of unbound water in a ganache (also known as its water activity or available water) that has the biggest effect on the rate of microbial growth. Measuring water activity is how scientists predict the expected shelf life of food products.

As a side note, cocoa mass is actually ANTI-microbial, so pure chocolate (even without preservatives) has a long shelf life — most of the bars I’ve bought recently have an expiration date 1.5 years from their production date.

How can I make my ganache last longer?

First, for obvious reasons, your ganache will stay fresh longer if you scald the cream before pouring it over the chocolate, since the heat will kill a lot of microbes. Scalding cream repeatedly also helps condense the cream somewhat by evaporating a small amount of the water. Less water = lower water activity = less microbial growth.

I’ve never been lucky enough to make ganache in the UK, but they have something there called double cream, which contains 48% dairy fat — it must do wonders for the shelf life of British ganache. In the US, the heavy cream I find at most supermarkets only contains about 36% dairy fat, so evaporating some of that extra water by repeatedly scalding the cream would likely produce longer-lasting ganache. Though, I wonder if scalding the cream affects its taste? If anyone knows, please share.

All that aside, it’s actually the type of sugar that has the biggest impact on the shelf life of ganache-filled truffles. When professional chocolatiers make ganache, they typically add invert sugar (or even honey, a natural invert sugar) to hot cream at a ratio of 5-8 grams of invert sugar to 100 grams of cream. Invert sugar binds with water, dramatically reducing water activity.

Long story short: a ganache-filled chocolate truffle made with invert sugar should be shelf-stable at room temperature for 6-8 weeks — which is why, to go back to my original question, professionally made ganache-filled chocolate truffles can sit out on the counter for weeks without going bad.

What if I don’t like the idea of cooking with an ingredient my grandma wouldn’t recognize?

I hear you. I’m kind of bummed about the idea of putting chemically altered sugar in my truffles too. It just sounds so…. processed. But when all is said and done, invert sugar really isn’t so bad. You can actually make your own by adding cream of tartar or citric acid to sugar and water and reducing them into a simple syrup.

Plus, your grandma probably ate plenty of invert sugar in her time. It’s ubiquitous in candy.

Plate of chocolate bonbons

In any event, I’m ordering some invert sugar on Amazon this week for use in my continuing ganache experiments. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Tempering chocolate: seeding method

The seeding method of tempering chocolate
~ Amber Latner
Adding seed to melted dark chocolate
Adding seed to melted chocolate

Last week when I posted about my first attempt using the tabliering method for tempering chocolate, I promised to review the seeding method in a later post. So here it is.

This will be a much shorter post than my last post on tempering because there is a lot of overlap between the tabliering and seeding methods of tempering.  In both methods, the melting process is the same, as is the temperature to which the chocolate must be raised to dissolve the fatty acid crystals (this happens for dark chocolate at roughly 116-118 degrees Fahrenheit).

Here are the most important differences between tempering by seeding versus tabliering:

  1. The seeding method only works if you have some tempered chocolate on hand to use as your seed chocolate. So if all you have is a block of untempered chocolate, you’ll have to use the tabliering method.
  2. The seeding method is much, much less messy than the tabliering method. No brown fingernails, no chocolate residue all over your counter. However, the tradeoff is that seeding takes 10-15 minutes longer than tabliering.
  3. With seeding, once the seed chocolate is thoroughly incorporated and the chocolate has cooled to 88-90 degrees Fahrenheit, you’re done, the chocolate is tempered. You don’t have to cool it to 82 degrees and then reheat it to 90 degrees like with tabliering.

    Melting dark chocolate couverture
    Melting dark chocolate couverture

Here’s how to get started. First, melt your chocolate in the microwave. Reserve some unmelted seed chocolate — roughly 10-20% of the total chocolate you’re working with. Just eyeball it, you don’t need to be precise.

For step-by-step instructions on tempering using the seeding method, check out this excerpt from The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg (provides directions for both seeding and tabliering methods).

Basically you want to bring the melted chocolate up to 116 degrees Fahrenheit, add your seed chocolate, a little at a time, stirring constantly, waiting until the seed has fully melted before adding more. Keep this up until the chocolate cools to 88-90 degrees. It may take 10-15 minutes to cool. When the temperature hits 90 degrees, it’s tempered.

Unmelted seed in my tempered chocolate
Unmelted seed in my tempered chocolate

Dip the back of a spoon in the chocolate to do a quick test — the chocolate should firm up in the fridge in a couple of minutes.  It should look shiny, you should be able to touch it without it instantly melting, and when you try to break it you should hear a sharp snap.

If you see any extra unmelted seed chocolate in your bowl at this point, you’re supposed to remove it to avoid overcrystalization (I’ll write more on overcrystalization in a future post).

When this happened to me, I couldn’t find a good way to remove the seed, it was kind of like trying to remove egg shells from raw egg whites with your fingers. I tried a slotted spoon, but the holes were too small. Finally I gave up and left it in.

Testing the temper of dark chocolate using the seeding method
See how tests 3 and 4 have a lovely shine?

As you can see, compared to the tabliering method, it took me an extra 11 minutes to get from melted chocolate (test 1) to tempered chocolate (test 3).  However, I had no trouble keeping it tempered for 20 minutes (test 4), partially because I was obsessive about rewarming it every few minutes.

Overall I MUCH prefer seeding to tabliering.  The 11 extra minutes it took to cool down the chocolate are SO worth it for the extra control and (comparatively) minimal clean-up.