Homemade chocolate!

[Stanley Edwards]

Loads of good videos and varied information on the net today. Has anyone tried?

I have a couple of good reasons to give this some thorough research. One thing I remember from many, many years ago is the importance of marble moulds. Can't find anything on the web, and my friend Christina seems to get very good results from silicon moulds using melted Lindt (as opposed to making her own from scratch).

My intention is to work from the beans and all raw materials. Starting with roasting them Eventually, I will manufacture my own chocolate paint, but it needs to taste fucking good also, because it will be the World's most expensive chocolate!

All recipes, all ideas, all experience. Get into it now people. You will be way ahead of the game if you do, because I have absolutely no doubt at all that homemade chocolate is about to become the fashionable after dinner dinner party coolness.

There is an excellent video here.

 

[campanula]

I still have a (full) jar of some 'healthy chocolate spread'' my eldest offspring made for me - a disgusting mix of carob, maple syrup, cane sugar, coconut oil, stevia and other joyless crap beloved of the food health police. I must scrape it into the bin as the Kilner jar will be useful for my home made jellies (involving vast quantities of white sugar)...along with the numerous, now empty Nutella jars.

 

[bi0boy]

Why do people eat carob again? Is chocolate not vegan or something?

 

[bi0boy]

Loads of good videos and varied information on the net today. Has anyone tried?

I have a couple of good reasons to give this some thorough research. One thing I remember from many, many years ago is the importance of marble moulds. Can't find anything on the web, and my friend Christina seems to get very good results from silicon moulds using melted Lindt (as opposed to making her own from scratch).

My intention is to work from the beans and all raw materials. Starting with roasting them Eventually, I will manufacture my own chocolate paint, but it needs to taste fucking good also, because it will be the World's most expensive chocolate!

All recipes, all ideas, all experience. Get into it now people. You will be way ahead of the game if you do, because I have absolutely no doubt at all that homemade chocolate is about to become the fashionable after dinner dinner party coolness.

There is an excellent video here.

How will you buy good beans? Isn't bean selection the most important step? Do they grow it in Spain?

 

[Throbbing Angel]

bi0boy boy dog friendly innit

 

[Pickman's model]

Stan

Have you ever had any training in food hygiene?

 

[Stanley Edwards]

How will you buy good beans? Isn't bean selection the most important step? Do they grow it in Spain?

AFAIK cacao does not grow in Spain. You have actually hit the nail on the head mind. There is a very good reason why making your own chocolate from scratch is about to become the coolest thing ever.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

Some nice history here.

 

[a_chap]

My intention is to work from the beans and all raw materials. Starting with roasting them Eventually, I will manufacture my own chocolate paint, but it needs to taste fucking good also, because it will be the World's most expensive chocolate!

"the World's most expensive" as in "the World's most expensive lawsuit"?

 

[Stanley Edwards]

The Chocolate Revolution

This is a nice one.

Huge potential for inspiration here. Hopefully, within the next 48 Hours I will be back in Granada with my own kitchen

 

[dessiato]

I've done it. Although it wasn't at home it was in a shop in Mijas. When I lived in Porto there was a shop which hand made chocolates. They were expensive. The problem is that it's time consuming to make good chocolate, and, therefore, it needs to be expensive to make it profitable. This is where the difficulty starts. Who's going to buy expensive chocolate? Unless it's very good of course.

I'm too lazy to put in the time it takes to make very good, artisan, chocolate.

 

[mrs quoad]

A longstanding history of massive fucking failure by large scale well funded efforts on this front, which usually resolves to "that's why everyone buys callets from sensible well-established makers and then melts it down to produce their own "home made" chocolate."

A friend of mine also made multiple attempts at, basically, producing very expensive granular waxy shite, and I'd trust him infinitely more in the kitchen than I'd trust you, Stan.

There's an excellent expose of some BS artist American fake "bean to cup" wankers that I'll try to dig up, bc it documents precisely why most people just don't bother.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

... and I'd trust him infinitely more in the kitchen than I'd trust you, Stan...

1: You have never tasted my apple charlotte.
2: My Great uncle on my mothers side worked for Cadbury's - I reckon it is in my blood.

 

[mrs quoad]

How the Mast Brothers fooled the world into paying $10 a bar for crappy hipster chocolate

Mast Brothers: What Lies Behind the Beards (Part 1, Taste/Texture) – DallasFood

Mast Brothers: What Lies Behind the Beards (Part 2, Equipment) – DallasFood

Mast Brothers: What Lies Behind the Beards (Part 3, Ingredients) – DallasFood

Mast Brothers: What Lies Behind the Beards (Part 4, Confessions) – DallasFood

And a related scandal in which a "top end" "hundreds of $ a box" chocolate makers were pretending to be bean to bar chocolatiers (when they were just melting other people's callets down): What’s Noka Worth? (Part 1) – DallasFood

 

[mrs quoad]

2: My Great uncle on my mothers side worked for Cadbury's - I reckon it is in my blood.

If that's the way things get into your blood, did all your other great uncles, by any chance, work for industrial gin manufacturers, Stan?

 

[Stanley Edwards]

If that's the way things get into your blood, did all your other great uncles, by any chance, work for industrial gin manufacturers, Stan?

I don't drink, nor distill gin.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

How the Mast Brothers fooled the world into paying $10 a bar for crappy hipster chocolate...
And a related scandal in which a "top end" "hundreds of $ a box" chocolate makers were pretending to be bean to bar chocolatiers (when they were just melting other people's callets down): What’s Noka Worth? (Part 1) – DallasFood

That's just people falling for bullshit.

My friend makes 'artesan chocolates' from Lindt. Uses standard moulds. Her only touch is the filling and decorative wrapping. She cycles around town trying to sell them for €2 each. All fair enough as far as I am concerned.

However, even though I doubt very much my chocolate product will ever be eaten, I do want to know I have genuinely done the best I can from start to finish with raw ingredients. Plenty of scope for practice - costs are irrelevant. I only need a single first order to make it work financially.

I started the Limonera project more than Three years ago. I'm not entirely new to this.

 

[Cid]

My intention is to work from the beans and all raw materials. Starting with roasting them Eventually, I will manufacture my own chocolate paint, but it needs to taste fucking good also, because it will be the World's most expensive chocolate!

You can't, not without a fair bit of kit anyway.

I think you'd also find that keeping the chocolate liquid for paint would involve adding stuff that affects the taste too much.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

You can't, not without a fair bit of kit anyway.

I think you'd also find that keeping the chocolate liquid for paint would involve adding stuff that affects the taste too much.

Nah. I've done all this.

Solutions which have no effect on taste, or texture without adding anything.

The 'kit' is pretty basic and affordable.

Honest. May have to make my own marble moulds though. That could be the mission.

 

[bluescreen]

Mind you, on the genuine home made chocolate front, there was this story from The Food Programme just now.

Dan Saladino meets a woman who believes Venezuela's escape from crisis rests on chocolate. Maria Fernanda Di Giacobbe is on a mission to reclaim her country's former cacao bean glory.

I had no idea that Venezuela had such a history of chocolate making. I wish I didn't fear she's pissing in the wind, though.
BBC Radio 4 - Food Programme, Food Stories from Venezuela Part 2: Maria Fernanda Di Giacobbe

 

[Stanley Edwards]

Mind you, on the genuine home made chocolate front, there was this story from The Food Programme just now.

I had no idea that Venezuela had such a history of chocolate making. I wish I didn't fear she's pissing in the wind, though.
BBC Radio 4 - Food Programme, Food Stories from Venezuela Part 2: Maria Fernanda Di Giacobbe

Nice link.

Love the idea of 'chocolate laboratories'. I am going to use that

--/ Actually, I am going with 'Chocolate Studio'.