Level: Apprentice
Reading time: 10 min
i want to make chocolate peanut butter. So can i use such grinder I can make in 2 steps namely 1 grind peanuts with cocoa powder and sugar in grinder then for proper and smooth consistency like nutella grind in such stone grinder
You can use the Spectra 11 to make a variety of things. Nut butters and their variations are one of them. Since you can also make praline (hazelnut and sugar) there is no reason you cannot make your peanut butter chocolate creation. But you may or may not run into some practical considerations.
The main issue you are going to run into is that if your goal is something like Nutella, it may well be too thick for the Melanger. It is spreadable and does not really flow. At least if you produce it with the standard Nutella ingredients.
This is one of those times that the use of cocoa powder is called for. If you are keeping traditional as it were Nutella consists of the following:
- 55% sugar
- 16% Vegetable oil
- 13% Hazelnut
- 7.8% Skim milk powder
- 7.4% Cocoa powder
- Lecithin
If you do some calculations you will find that it is about 30% fat, which is a touch lower than the recommended 33% fat for most chocolates. Lower than 33% and your mixture may be too thick to work properly in the Melanger.
But you were asking about peanut butter, not Nutella. In that case the gloves are off and you no longer have to follow those proportions. And it is also worth noting that neither peanut butter nor Nutella are actually as smooth as chocolate, which will also work to your advantage. As will the relatively small amount of cocoa powder the above recipe calls for.
I would recommend first off making sure you are using roasted peanuts. The same moisture rule applies to nut butters as it does to chocolate. Too much water will cause the nut butter to get very viscous in the Melanger. It may flow with it stopped but the sheer makes it push back as it were. I once almost broke my melanger trying to grind raw almonds. It wasn’t pretty.
So start with your peanuts. How much? I’d start at 60%. Unlike chocolate that is a solid at room temperature, peanut oil is a liquid so you can avoid having to heat them and the Melanger bowl. Add them a bit at a time until you have as much as your recipe calls for. I would suggest giving it probably an hour or two to grind before continuing with your next addition.
That would the sugar. Even though the Nutella recipe is 55% sugar, I would start off with 25% and see what you think. Again, I would give that a couple hours to grind down. You can always add more and keep grinding.
Now you come to a decision. I said before that cocoa powder would be ok here. And it would be. At around 7% you could very possibly just stir it in and be done. Remember, Nutella isn’t as smooth as chocolate. Except we are not exactly following the recipe and to make it to 100% total, you are going to need around 15% and past experience has shown me that the melanger is going to have trouble with that. So, you can either try stirring it in and being done, or, try this upping of the ante.
You have gone through the trouble of using a Melanger and fresh ingredients. I would suggest going ahead and dropping the cocoa powder and instead use roasted cocoa nibs. Just put the 15% cocoa nibs (don’t forget to warm them) right into the Melanger. Since cocoa is about 50%, this gives you the same percent of cocoa in your mix as Nutella but has the advantage of that you will be adding some cocoa butter which will help thicken your mixture (since it sets up at room temperature) without the need for high sugar and other ingredients. And keep in mind it will be a bit thinner in the Melanger because the cocoa butter is melted.
And after all that, I am going to toss out one more piece of advice that is closer to how I would actually approach this. At least the first time as I am formulating the exact recipe I want. Keep in mind I gave you some approximations (60% peanut, 25% sugar,15% cocoa nib) that may or may not be to your tastes both flavor wise and from a consistency/viscosity standpoint. And at the same time I’ll show you why Nutella has some of that vegetable oil in it.
When I did this I made a batch of sweetened peanut butter and a batch of chocolate and mixed them together (in the kitchen, in bowls, not the melanger) until I hit the flavor proportions I wanted. For me this was 25% sugar in each. Then I mixed them in small batches at various proportions until I hit the flavor I wanted. 75% peanut was both too peanut heavy and too thin. 75% chocolate didn’t have enough peanut flavor. For my tastes 45% peanut butter was just about right but it was too thick. It was like a chocolate fudge and not spreadable at all. Enter the vegetable oil. Or close enough. Since I already had peanuts in there I added a small amount of peanut oil until the consistency smoothed out to where I wanted it. In this case it was about 7%.
And a little tip. When you are testing your proportions, I had the peanut mixture about 60 F and the chocolate at 90F so when mixed, the chocolate set up. It saved me time waiting for it to cool and solidify.
Once I had my proportions, I was able to make it in the melanger in one go since the cocoa butte kept it fluid while hot but solidified just right when cool.
So there you go. Three different ways to make a sweetened chocolate nut spread. See which one works for you and your tastes and go from there.