Level: Apprentice
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I am struggling making my 70% chocolate with only two ingredients. It seems like what I should do but it is really thick and hard to work with. It blooms really badly. What am I doing wrong?
Why are you not adding a little cocoa butter?
I mostly keep my head down in social media but I’ve heard through various grapevines that two ingredient chocolate is becoming a *thing*. And I completely do not understand it. It is talked about like it is superior or the maker is superior for using only two ingredients.
I guess I am going to soap box here a little, and I don’t mean to offend anyone in particular. Just take it as my musings on the subject.
It seems maybe this is where you are getting the idea you should be using only two ingredients. Cocoa beans and sugar I assume. Trying to suss out why, people toss out phrases extolling the purity of flavor or staying true to the cacao or other such nebulous statements. At the end of the day, it feels like marketing. A way to set themselves out from the crowd. Ok I guess.
If that is what you like, by all means make it. But I caution the thinking that using only two ingredients is in inherently better. By what metric? Sure. Few people want to eat a chocolate with 27 ingredients where 95% of them are chemical names. But once you are out of that mindset, I don’t truly get how 2 is better than 3 or 4. Why not 1 ingredient?
But to my way of thinking, it is some kind of pendulum reaction to 27 ingredient chocolate product. That if that is considered inferior (no real argument there) then the absolute bare minimum must be the best. This is the same logic that raw chocolate folks make. Over roasting is bad, so no roasting is best. That’s bad logic and the world does not work that way. Too much food (obesity) is bad so no food is best? Really? It is the same logic and makes as much sense. None.
Going back to metrics and why two ingredients are better I would propose these two metrics for consideration.
1) Adding a little cocoa butter (2-3%) to you chocolate can actually enhance the perceived flavor of the chocolate. It does this by allowing the chocolate to dissolve faster in your mouth, creating the sense of more flavor. You are familiar with this phenomenon in regards to sugar. Which seems sweeter? Rock candy or granulated sugar? Both are 100% sugar, but the granulated seems sweeter since it can dissolve faster.
2) Two ingredient chocolate can be thicker, and more temperamental to temper. How does this make it better? It doesn’t.
It is also worth noting that in conversations with supposed two ingredient makers, well over half say they used *a little* cocoa butter in their melangers to make life easier…..which suddenly sounds like 3 ingredient chocolate to me. This more than anything makes me think they are just playing a marketing game and that it really doesn’t matter.
That all said, let’s see if I can help.
First off, I am going to recommend you reconsider why you want to use only 2 ingredients. Put aside what you see other people doing. Keep in mind that that two ingredient chocolate you tasted and love *may* contain extra cocoa butter. Evaluate the chocolate you are making for what it is. Did you actually try making it with a little extra cocoa butter and if so, did you like it better without added cocoa butter? And why didn’t you make 1 ingredient chocolate if you wanted to *pure* cacao flavor?
Seriously, this is about what you like and enjoy. And that means the process too. If you can’t temper it because it is so thick, and it blooms, and you didn’t like the chalky texture, just how did you improve the experience and/or final product by keeping it *pure*?
Ok. I was going to offer help. I have heard that people have had difficulty with Tien Giang being especially thick. So I roasted 6 lbs and divided it into 3 batches.
1) The control. 74% cocoa, 26% sugar.
2) Heated control
3) 20% vodka soak
Spring boarding off my success with the honey chocolate, I mixed in vodka 20% by weight into the roasted nibs. After soaking in for 2 days, I dried them in an oven for 2 hours at 150F. To make sure it was not just the heating that made any difference, I also heated an equal amount of roasted nibs the same way. My hypothesis here was that moisture was causing the extra thickness and that by reducing that moisture, I could reduce the viscosity.
The final results were everything I hoped they would be.
1) This was thick and very hard to work with.
2) This was thinner and easier to work with.
3) This was the thinnest of the three.
The extra drying helped significantly to dry out the nibs, even though they had been previously roasted. In many cases I think this might be all you need to do if you insist on only 2 ingredients.
The vodka really helped to pull out extra moisture. I took weight measurements before and after drying and out of 740 grams of nibs, the heated control lost 5 grams of water, and the vodka treated lost 12 grams.
And the flavors were basically the same.
Alternatively, 3% cocoa butter reduces the viscosity nicely and if you are not allergic, 0.5% lecithin will very nicely bind with the water and make the chocolate easier to work with. And to my tastes, they all taste just as *pure* and true to the cocoa’s potential. Your mileage may vary.
If you have not guessed, I lean toward solid data and rigorous evaluation. Don’t follow a path because everyone else is. Make what you like and be honest about it and challenge your per-conceived notions. Maybe they will be right….but maybe you will find there was a heavy placebo effect going on and that 2 ingredient chocolate isn’t anything particular special.
Chocolate you made yourself. That’s special.