I have devised my own recipe for a dark goat’s milk chocolate by compiling the information that a broad range of amateur chocolate makers from across the world have shared on the internet, in addition to the morsels of knowledge that I have gained through working with and reading about pros. If you are also a home chocolate enthusiast and want to follow along, add all of these ingredients to your refiner as I speak about each one and what makes it unique. If you are also a home chocolate hobbyist. It’s possible that you’ll need to wait a couple of hours in between processes.
Don’t forget to get your nibs nice and toasty!
Contents
Dame Which Cacao?
(1010g, cleaned & roasted Peruvian nibs)
A few of years ago, I worked in a chocolate store in the southern region of Peru for a total of two months. Just before I departed, I made a purchase of a couple kilograms of their freshly delivered chocolate, which originated in the Cuzco region. Let’s simply term these beans “aged,” since the taste has not been badly impacted by the passing years; in fact, it is usual procedure within the industry to deliberately age finished chocolate, so why not well-stored beans? The flavor has not been negatively affected by the passing years.
In order to be ready for this experiment, I cleaned, roasted, and winnowed the rest of the beans I had from this time. At the same time, I did some study on fat ratios and tried to Benjamin Button a chocolate recipe. Milk chocolate should have between 35 and 45% fat, according to the majority of sources, although the exact percentage varies depending on how you want to utilize the finished product. When I added up the fat in the three components I knew everything about (sugar, cocoa butter, and milk powder), I took a leap of faith and concluded that my cacao was on the lower end of the fat content range, which would make them a little bit less than 50% fat by weight.
My then-theoretical chocolate had a ratio of around 1080 grams of cocoa mass to about 2500 grams of cacao mass, which is about 43 percent fat. This kept it within the ideal range for sweetness while still allowing for some variation in the amount of cocoa butter contained within the cacao. The last time I attempted to make goat’s milk chocolate, which was over a year ago, the finished product was a little grainy and very strongly goat’s milk-y even at 50% cacao. Because I continue to mature and learn from my mistakes, I kept the amount of milk powder I used much lower and raised the cacao percentage from my previous experiments with milk chocolate.
Taking into consideration the beans’ subtle fruity cocoa flavor as well as their advanced age, I aimed for a mellow final product. The utilization of goat’s milk resulted in a spiciness and natural sweetness, in addition to a cheesecake creaminess, similar to what one experiences at the end of Manoa’s 69% Goat Milk bar. Unfortunately, they do not provide any information about where their beans come from. However, the information about my beans that is recorded here is available to the public.
25 hours according to the conche (cocoa butter added concurrently with beans; milk powder & sugar added 4 hours in, before the machine ran all night & day)
Bean Quality is a 6.5 out of 10.
Bean Origin: Cusco area, Peru
Late 2015 for the Bean Vintage.
Bean Size: medium
Bean Fruity and chocolatey in scent.
Beans’ Post-Roast Taste: Powerful Cacao, Light Fruits, and a Bitter Aftertaste (I wish I could show you my boyfriend’s expression when he tried them for the first time; it was like a newborn eating lemon for the first time)
The color of the beans after roasting is a very dark brown (no scorch marks)
These Cocoa Butters, in Unholy Matrimony
(500g, melted, of a blend of types & origins)
I went on a shopping spree during my internship in Peru, and at that time I purchased many jars of their house-pressed cocoa butter. The majority of cocoa beans have around fifty percent fat, give or take five percent, and all of that fat is in the form of cocoa butter. The addition of additional cocoa butter can make the texture of the chocolate more smooth and help it melt more quickly in the mouth. It can also reduce the impact that the liquid chocolate has on the refining machine, which is especially important for chocolate makers who work with micro-batch quantities.
Cocoa butter of organic Peruvian origin made up sixty percent of the total amount of cocoa butter added to this chocolate. The remaining forty percent of the cocoa butter was a deodorized cocoa butter of unknown origin, which I purchased after seeing it advertised as “food grade” and “for home chocolate makers.” I made the mistake of purchasing deodorized cocoa butter (“deodorized” means that the chocolatey scent has been removed, which is typically accomplished through the use of heat), which I will slowly use up in small quantities along with the rest of my Peruvian cocoa butter until I can find a reputable source online that ships here.
In addition to butter that has been deodorized and left unrefined, there is also butter that has been completely refined. This kind of butter has had its color removed, often by the use of clay, which then frequently imparts both its aroma and taste to the final product (hence its use almost exclusively in the cosmetic industry). Although a cocoa butter that has just been deodorized may be used successfully in the production of chocolate, the aroma of this particular product was a bit too off-putting. Personally, I like the rich chocolate aroma of unrefined cocoa butter. I just prefer a butter that has not been altered in any way since it was squeezed from the beans, and in the future, I will opt to shell out the extra cash for organic raw cocoa butter.
Goat’s Milk Powder & Others Like It
(340g, which is an entire huge purple can)
I have previously written about the many varieties of beans and the various uses that can be found for chocolate, as well as the various milk powders that are appropriate for each variety of bean. In this particular instance, I knew that I wanted to develop a chocolate with a larger proportion of cocoa and a lot of added sweetness to attract the attention of my students and coworkers (Koreans seem to be major lovers of sweets), but I didn’t want it to taste too “weird.” But I needed to make a lot of chocolate, and my refrigerator was only partially stocked with buttermilk and nonfat milk powder. I had to improvise. Therefore, goat’s milk it had to be!
I knew the fat percentage of the powder was going to be 25%, and I also knew precisely how little milk powder I was going to have access to, so when I calculated my recipe, I only used 20% milk powder, which added 80g of fat to the ratio. Any amount above that can have a negative impact on the flavor and texture of the final product, and after conducting these experiments, I can say with complete certainty that I will continue to reduce the percentage of milk powder in my recipe (especially when experimenting with goat’s milk and higher cacao percentages, because flavors of such intensity can begin to compete with one another after a certain point). I have even seen across bars that have just 6-7 percent milk powder in their ingredients!
Sweet, Sweet Sugar
(650g of the saccharine powder)
This time around, in the goal of simplifying manufacturing and maintaining the emphasis on the sweetness of the chocolate, I opted to skip using more unusual varieties of sugar in favor of pure cane sugar. This decision was made in light of the following considerations: It is inexpensive, simple to locate in rural Korea, and it would not substantially alter the flavor of the finished product, which would cause my pupils to lose interest in the subject matter. I never add sugar until the very end since doing so silences the sloshing noise that my machine creates whenever the water-to-fat ratio is askew, and including it earlier in the process allows it to be ground down into indiscernibly tiny particles for a smoother texture overall. In this particular instance, I did so in two stages, separated by about one hour, with the second stage occurring in combination with the remaining cocoa butter and the whole of the goat’s milk.
I Put it all Together— What Now?
(2500g AKA ~5.5 lbs of fresh chocolate)
To begin, I used some molds that I found at a local craft shop to make hundreds of untempered chocolates and chocolate-covered marshmallows for my students and other people I know. I gave them to them as soon as they came out of the machine. My first sales were made at the English Class Market Summer ’17, and the robot chocolates were very well received by customers. Even yet, as soon as I removed them from the refrigerator, they began to blossom despite the fact that I had not tempered it. I grimaced. The children were oblivious to the fact. Since I had well over five pounds of chocolate to experiment with, all I was doing was decreasing the amount of storage space that was absolutely essential.
Due to the fact that cooking with milk chocolate results in a different behavior than cooking with dark chocolate, I limited my creations to those made with pure chocolate. However, in the future, I want to use dark chocolate to create brownies and fudge. This is a test to determine the chocolate’s consistency and, of course, to ensure that it is coming into its ultimate shape in the proper manner. Almost as soon as I had finished making this first batch, I put roughly a quarter of it away so that it may age for an undetermined amount of time. After that, I quickly got to work sorting beans in preparation for making my next batch of chocolate, which would be a more manageable quantity of Vietnamese dark chocolate.
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Have you ever made chocolate at home?
