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.

Five myths about chocolate

Fruit of the Cacao Tree
~ Amber Latner ~ 2 Comments

There is so much misinformation out there about chocolate. This post tackles some of the most common misconceptions.

1) Myth: chocolate contains caffeine

There is absolutely no caffeine in chocolate. What chocolate does contain is theobromine, a mild nervous system stimulant that is chemically distinct from caffeine and affects the human nervous system in subtly different ways. Weird ways, too (anyone need a cough suppressant?)

It’s also thought to be less addictive than caffeine (although from personal experience I’m not so sure I believe that).

2) Myth: cocoa comes from a bean

How many times in my life have I wondered what exactly is chocolate. A nut? A bean? A fruit? Even when I’ve looked it up online, it was far from easy to figure this out.

So, here’s the answer: chocolate is a seed. Or more precisely, chocolate is made from the kernels of seeds found inside the fruit of the cacao tree.

Fresh Cacao Seeds and Pulp
A fresh cacao fruit contains 30-50 seeds surrounded by white pulp

3) Myth: cacao and cocoa are the same thing

Not exactly. The seeds of the cacao tree’s fruit are referred to as cacao (ka·cow) until they’re fermented, after which point they are called cocoa. The product we buy and eat in its solid, powder and nib form is ALWAYS cocoa. We don’t eat unfermented cacao beans. Ever.

Which brings me to….

4) Myth: it’s possible to make raw chocolate

Almost all cocoa products that market themselves as raw are actually not. That includes those products that call themselves “raw cacao.”

How do I know this? Cocoa seeds are fermented, and fermentation temperatures can run as high as 130 degrees Fahrenheit — well above the 104-118 degree maximum temperature of a raw food product. With very few exceptions*, manufacturers claiming to sell raw cocoa products are selling you a product made from beans that were heated above 118 degrees before ever leaving the farm. I would be VERY skeptical of any cocoa product marketed as raw.

Cocoa beans drying in the sun
Cocoa beans drying in the sun

That said, it’s possible to make chocolate from fermented, unroasted cocoa beans or beans roasted at extremely low temperatures. Raaka Chocolate has been successfully doing it for years. In fact, it’s likely that most raw chocolate companies are actually selling bars made from unroasted beans, not raw beans.

If you buy cocoa products made from unroasted beans, be aware that cacao is fermented in very unsanitary conditions, and cocoa shells are often contaminated with salmonella or worse. Roasting the beans before removing the nibs (kernels) is the most effective way to ensure the final product is safe for consumers. While Raaka may have found other ways to sterilize nibs, I wouldn’t trust an unknown or online manufacturer to be as careful.

5) Myth: roasting cocoa beans reduces their antioxidant properties

Cocoa powder, chocolate and roasted cocoa beans
Clockwise from the left: cocoa powder, chocolate and roasted cocoa beans

Also untrue. While roasting cocoa beans may change their antioxidant profile — increasing some antioxidants and reducing others — it does not necessarily reduce their total antioxidant load, especially when care is taken to roast the beans at relatively low temperatures, as most small-batch chocolate makers do.

Regardless of the health benefits, roasting cocoa beans vastly improves their taste, giving them that distinct chocolatey flavor we’ve come to expect. Think about how different raw walnuts taste from toasted walnuts, for example, and you’ll have some sense of how roasting cocoa beans might alter and enhance their flavor.

*Big Tree Farms in Bali makes cold-pressed cocoa butter from cocoa beans that are fermented and roasted at temperatures no higher than 115 degrees Fahrenheit, according to its website. 

How small is the chocolate world?

Criollo cocoa beans from Venezuela
~ Amber Latner ~ 2 Comments

Print of cocoa tree and fruit

You know when something happens that’s such a coincidence, you can’t help but stop to marvel at it? And then blog about it? (Or is that just me?)

Last week I won a copy of The Chocolate Tasting Kit at a chocolate industry panel at the Smithsonian. The panel moderator, cookbook author Monica Bhide, offered to give a free copy of the book to the first person who could correctly answer the question, “what does theobroma cacao mean in Greek?” After some (gentle) elbow prodding from my husband, I raised my hand.

In unrelated news (or so I thought), the next day I was emailing a thank you note to the very kind author of this inspiring blog about chocolate. It’s the kind of blog I would love to create someday (maybe when I actually know what I’m doing). I’d emailed her a question and she’d responded right away, checked out my blog, and even offered me some great tempering advice. So helpful.

And then I noticed her email signature: “Eagranie Yuh. Author, The Chocolate Tasting Kit.”

Those who work in the chocolate world (chocolate makers, chocolatiers, competition judges, bloggers, authors, educators and shop owners) all seem to know each other. If you follow one of them on Twitter, it’s likely that person is following dozens, maybe even hundreds of other industry participants. Many of them are friends. They meet up at industry events and award shows, or they speak on panels like the one at the Smithsonian. They eat each other’s chocolate, and sometimes they even buy shipping containers of cocoa beans together. I remember being so surprised to learn that one of my favorite craft chocolate makers has been using the exact same Dominican cocoa beans as another well known chocolate maker because they had gone in on a shipping container of beans together.

It’s understandable that the American craft chocolate industry is so close-knit. It’s tiny: there are only a few dozen American craft chocolate makers, at most. And the hurdles for these small business owners can seem insurmountable. Equipment and certifications are expensive, chocolate is a temperamental, unpredictable product, and American consumers are still somewhat uncomfortable spending $10 for a chocolate bar. Most chocolate makers have no illusions about becoming rich making chocolate. Usually they’re in the business because they love it.

With so many obstacles to success, chocolate makers NEED each other. They need each other’s advice, inspiration and support. And they need the industry to be successful, as a whole. Which means they need their competitors to be successful. For this reason, they are a welcoming, transparent, hyper-communicative group of business owners. They praise each other’s successes and promote each other’s events. They give advice freely, even to newbies like me.

Word "kakao" traced in cocoa powder

Emailing a Canadian blogger only to later discover she’s the author of a book I’d just won at a D.C. chocolate panel is exactly the kind of coincidence I should learn to expect in such a close-knit community. And yet, like so many other experiences I’ve had as I begin my chocolate education, I can’t help but feel like it’s some kind of cosmic cattle prod directing me deeper and deeper into this crazy passion (obsession?) of mine.

For the record, theobroma cacao is Greek for “food of the gods.”

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.