Make your own chocolate

8 degrees here, and I'm shuttling back and forth between inside and outdoor wood boiler. Throwing sunflower seeds on the snow for the birds.  Making chocolate.   I mean, really making it from cacao nibs. This is ridiculously messy.

This time I started with roasted nibs. Previously I started with raw cacao beans, roasted, crushed, blah blah.
Nibs were in an insulated chest, along with cocoa butter.  A 60 watt incandescent bulb warmed it all to the right temp.

The hardware is a Champion juicer. Nibs go into the hopper. Juicer uses a screw auger. Crushes them into a paste (chocolate liquor) that drops into one container. Fiber bits come out the end of the auger.  At some point I started adding melted cocoa butter. When I had a container full of liquor, I took the fiber paste and put it back through the auger. Finished liquor went into a mixing bowl where I added cream, butter, allulose & sucralose, cinnamon and chile flakes. That mixture into a baking pan lined with parchment. 250 degree oven until it's more liquid, then a whole lot of mixing and stirring and tasting.

Finished product is dark chocolate, mildly sweet, with a little chile kick.  It's a building block. Future additions will include more sweetening, vanilla, nuts, more chile. One of my favorite snacks is whole chiles dipped in melted chocolate.

It's a lot of work. Now it's done and I head back outdoors to feed the boiler.

Thank you for sharing your experience with making chocolate.

Is making your own chocolate saving a lot of money?

How many hours did it take to process?

Anne Miller wrote:Thank you for sharing your experience with making chocolate.

Is making your own chocolate saving a lot of money?

How many hours did it take to process?

Doesn't save any money. Lets me make delicious chocolate without sugar.
Plus in case of SHTF, a guy with chocolate and guns will be the Emperor of Everything.

Total time about two hours, including cleanup. The ingredients had been warming beforehand.

For anyone who has a good supply of whole cacao pods and is willing to do this kind of work, this research may be inspiring:

https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-a-new-way-to-make-chocolate-thats-healthier-and-less-wasteful

And, for the OP: there are various and conflicting studies on sucralose, but it's not something I will use or recommend....

Ben Adams wrote:For anyone who has a good supply of whole cacao pods and is willing to do this kind of work, this research may be inspiring:

https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-a-new-way-to-make-chocolate-thats-healthier-and-less-wasteful.

going off on a tangent here: if you ever get your hands on a whole fresh cacau pod, the fruit part they are talking about here is SPECTACULAR. Typically it's used to make juice or desserts in places with cocoa production, and the pulp is frozen to make juice in other more faraway places (like where I live, where it's too cold for cocoa).
I've made chocolate, starting with separating/drying/fermenting the beans, roasting/grinding etc etc. I quite frankly don't like chocolate enough to go through all that! Makes coffee look easy. I'll stick with fruit.

Tereza, is there a way to describe the flavor of the fruit? I imagine it doesn't taste anything like finished chocolate.

it is definitely nothing like chocolate. the fruit is whitish and sweet, it's got a bit of a tang to it, a bit like a sour cherry, maybe, but milder? It's very subtle, not like a mango or something with a flavor that whacks you between the eyes.

I found a cacao pod once in an International Market.  The "slime" around the seeds is maybe a bit like lychee?  Certainly in texture, somewhat in taste.  There are definite-but-subtle cacao hints, but with a bright acidity on top of that -- well, like a fruit!  Not overly sweet.  Kids did not like it but it grew on me.  I think, like the seeds, it requires processing to be really good.  Betcha it would make a very interesting ice cream, which could then be studded with cacao nibs....

Russell Groves wrote:8 degrees here, and I'm shuttling back and forth between inside and outdoor wood boiler. Throwing sunflower seeds on the snow for the birds.  Making chocolate.   I mean, really making it from cacao nibs. This is ridiculously messy.

This time I started with roasted nibs. Previously I started with raw cacao beans, roasted, crushed, blah blah.
Nibs were in an insulated chest, along with cocoa butter.  A 60 watt incandescent bulb warmed it all to the right temp.

The hardware is a Champion juicer. Nibs go into the hopper. Juicer uses a screw auger. Crushes them into a paste (chocolate liquor) that drops into one container. Fiber bits come out the end of the auger.  At some point I started adding melted cocoa butter. When I had a container full of liquor, I took the fiber paste and put it back through the auger. Finished liquor went into a mixing bowl where I added cream, butter, allulose & sucralose, cinnamon and chile flakes. That mixture into a baking pan lined with parchment. 250 degree oven until it's more liquid, then a whole lot of mixing and stirring and tasting.

Finished product is dark chocolate, mildly sweet, with a little chile kick.  It's a building block. Future additions will include more sweetening, vanilla, nuts, more chile. One of my favorite snacks is whole chiles dipped in melted chocolate.

It's a lot of work. Now it's done and I head back outdoors to feed the boiler.

Thanks for shearing this useful info.