Forum Activity for @Mark Heim

You will want to use a high DE pectin.  The pectin will set by solids, temperature, and pH.  Typical solids is 78-80%, this will dehydrate the pectin enough for it to set.  The temperature needs to be kept hot until deposited or sheeted, otherwise you will get pre-gelling.  The acid, lowering the pH will set the pectin, pH should be 3.1-3.5.  As soon as the acid is added, deposit or sheet as it will start to pre-gel quickly.  Lower solids and higher pH will give a slower set, high solids and low pH will give a fast set.  There is also a lot you can do with the pectin type, not only deciding on apple or citrus, but the DE (also called DM) as well.

Citrus pectin is typically a cleaner, clearer gel.

You also want to look at how much protopectin you're adding with the fruit, if any, and compensate with the level of pectin you're adding.

One final note, be sure the pectin is fully hydrated before you cook.

Does the site no longer have a classifieds page for equipment, etc?

Thank you for the response. Now I just need to "digest" this.

Hi joseph,

Sent you a email, please check.

Pate de fruit pectin sold by Chef Rubber is the apple pectin if I'm not mistaken.  If you have a cheaper source of apple pectin just make sure it is the stuff for PDF not for jam as the jam version will not set up as you hope.  

The ganache does tend to stick to the blades as Tim has suggested above.  Might work better to mark the ganache with it lightly and use it as a guide to cutting with a knife.  

hello, what is your contact? I am based in Turkey and am looking for raw beans. 

I stand corrected then  I misunderstood the labeling on the FDA's site.   I wasnt suggesting that the big guys were lobbying for change on that regard, but I've heard discussions that it was suggested as a cost cutting measure.

The only thing I can think of would be that the caramel cutter is more like a pizza cutter. Ganache may stick to the blades as it rolls across.  Anyone with more experience have ideas to prevent that?

I'm personally not familiar with apple pectin. But I have run into issues with trying a recipe for pate de fruit from Andrew Schotts' book.  He has his own branded pectin blend specifically for pate de fruit called G Pectin, which I believe is sold at Chef Rubber.

This was discussed over on egullet here: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/97623-what-is-g-pectin/page-2  It's about a third to halfway down the page.

I've had success with Pamona Pectin recipe, which can usually be found in local specialty stores or in bigger places like Sprouts and Whole Foods. The trick is in heating things just right. Too little heat and it'll not set properly, too much heat or too much pectin and it'll be more of a gummy candy. It's been a tried and true go to for me.  

Tim:

The relevant regs are in CFR 21 Part 163 . The 1.75% figure for residual shell applies to nib - as all chocolate gets made from nib and this specification gets inherited by chocolate liquor, etc.

I have not heard about much lobbying by the big chocolate makers to increase this because they know - as Sebastian has said - that pathogens, heavy metals, and mycotoxins are mainly in the shell - and the shell messes with both flavor and texture in really quite negative ways.

I need a caramel cutter and I need a guitar cutter.  I can not afford the guitar cutter until the fall but I can get a caramel cutter probably this month.  Is there any reason why I should not cut up a slab of ganache with a caramel cutter?  Am I missing anything?

Thank you everyone in advance.

I want to make pate de fruit for two layer pralines.  I've tried a dozen times with 2 recipies and it never sets but I now understand that I need aple pectin, or something.  I see special pate de fruit pectin on Chef Rubber and I'm wondering if it's that worth paying more or will apple pectin be fine?  Is there anywhere cheaper than Chef Rubber for apple pectin?

It is interesting and I find the whole Raw Food think kind of...hmm, to remain diplomatic and civil.....stupid.   One of the reasons I got into chocolate was because of interest in where my food comes from and chasing down and reading up on food science.  I essentially became a foodie because of demonization of various ingredients. Big ones I see in chocolate is lecithin and corn syrup (high fructose or otherwise).  But I digress. that's a whole topic on it's own.

Something I noticed about the link you posted.  The shell content only seems to be an identification of selling and marketing cocoa nibs as a food in and of themselves.  So when you go to the store and find a bag of cocoa nibs; that's the standards that are required.  The reason I mention this is it seems that the big industry folks have toyed with if they havent already moved to just keeping the hulls in the processing because it accounts for 20% of "waste"  If processed and refined correctly other than a slightly more bitter and "dry" taste, I'm not sure there's any way to enforce that without sending inspectors to the factory as it's not readily noticible and I'm not entirely sure that it's testable either.

For the raw people; unfortunately it's going to take a small epidemic (more than one or 2 isolated cases) of someone getting sick before the FDA really moves on anything.  Right now, our politics have a lot of our safety agencies sorely underfunded which means they dont have quite the enforcement capacity as we would expect. Hopefully that changes, but until then, FDA and USDA are largely reactionary to problems as opposed to heading them off at the pass like they should.

Not meaning to dismiss them outright, so I do appologize for the wording here.  It seems like the majority of the Raw Food enthusiasts are able bodied adults that tend to be of a more new-age hippy mindset.  As long as it stays that way, I dont see too much of an issue.  It's when they start feeding this stuff to thier kids, that's the only time that I think that we'll feel the reverberations and the government will step in.

David -

I was thinking you could post it in the DIY group. You have all the formatting tools necessary to do this. There is even a page break you can insert so that you can put each step on its own page.

If you like, I can recreate the instructable for you, as a guide to others.

Having spent some time with my fair share of folks at the FDA - i can say with some degree of confidence that this is on their radar, and good things are not in store for those who habitually violate the standards and/or put consumers at risk.  That said, there's lots of threats to the food system, and not all of them are #1 priority, so it's difficult to say when the hammer will fall, but it will fall.  Remember that pathogens are only one of the category of 'bad things' that reside on shells.  Heavy metals and mycotoxins are also very real concerns.

Almost all sugar is produced - essentially - the same way - there's a series of extraction steps to get the sugar out of the plant, then it's concentrated, then it's purified.  It's at this purification step where you end up with a range of colors - every single region around the world calls their higher color sugars a different name - but they're all effectively the same thing - higher impurity sugars.  That may sound bad (and in some cases, it is - i've been to most sugar refineries in the world and some of them are abyssmal.  In other cases it's just more natural colors and is fine).

Since it's not effective to talk about each regions individual nomenclature (there's literally hundreds of names for the various brown sugars) - the world has standardized how they talk about it in the form of ICUMSA color standards - it's an analytical measure of how dark the sugar is.  Your standard white sugar has an ICUMSA value of perhaps 40-50.  A tan sugar may be ISCUMA 100.  A very dark sugar may be ICUMSA 600.  Not sure you're going to do anything with that, but sometimes the back story is interesting.

The easiest way to get higher color sugars is simply to run it through the washing, crystallizers, and centrifuges less often than one does for a white sugar, leaving effectively more molasses in it.  This typically results in a higher color, but still low moisture sugar (< 1%).  However, in some of the more modern high t hroughput refineries, it's not efficient for them to run like this, so what they do is highly refine everything at the high speed rates, then blend back the previously extracted molassess stream into the highly refined white sugar - sort of 'reconstituting' brown sugar.  These can be much 'wetter' and higher moisture than their counterparts - so it's important to get a specification on your sugar to know the moisture.  As you are aware, high moisture does bad things (tm) for chocolate.

Priscilla -

Continuous tempering machines are not designed for constant changeover. The reason is as you point out - it's not cost-effective to completely clean the internal plumbing and if you're using water to clean you need to let it dry out completely before starting the next batch.

For this reason, people tend to run their machines for as long as they possibly can before changing over. One scenario is to run one chocolate for an entire day, clean the machine at the end of the day, and then let it dry out over night. In most of the workshops I have visited, they have dedicated machines for dark, milk, and white. They size their machines to the amount of each chocolate they need. They might have a 25kg machine for dark, a 12kg machine for milk, and a 4kg for white.

When they have a flavored chocolate they use their continuous tempering machines in a semi-batch mode, taking off the tempered chocolate they need in small batches and flavoring only what they need.

One question I have is about the size of the average batch you are making. Is it a couple of kilos at a time or is it more like 5-10kg per hour or more?

I have been using Rapidura sugar and prefer it over other sugars that I've tried. Mainly for the flavor and the fact that it's organic. I did have an occasion where it seemed too moist so I put it on cookie sheets and heated it in the oven just long enough to remove the moisture. That sugar was from a small package I bought. I always put it in a vegi blender to make it finer before it goes into the melanger. I started buying it in small quantities and just recently purchased a 33 lb. bag from a co-op here in the states. It's actual origin is Brasil. The state side co-op is called Bulk Natural Foods , Tennessee. I can give you the name of the Brazilian manufacturer if you like. Let me know.

Okay I threw something temporary together for the Premier gear/belt replacement - feedback welcome! I would like to know if there's a better thread to post this so please let me know. Thanks!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Premier-Wonder-Grinder-Repair-Belts-and-Gears/

 We've spent the last year trying every cacao bean we can get our hands on, and it's just about time that we're starting to look at which sugar to use. We're currently using C&H Organic unrefined cane sugar for all our evaluation batches, though I'm curious to try Rapadura (sold as Rapunzel in the US). My question before buying it - has anyone used it in bean to bar chocolate? Does it have a low moisture content? I was interested in Zulka but we were having tempering issues (which may or may not have had anything to do with the slightly higher moisture content) - so we've stopped using Zulka and are back to C&H unrefined for now.

If anyone has a sugar recommendation (the less processed, the better!) that has a low moisture content and have experience with it, please let me know - thanks!

Updates and changes to features and functionality

February 1

• Completed a module-by-module check of the quota configurations. Some features that were turned off for some quotas that should have been turned on, were turned on.
• Did an integrity check of embedded YouTube videos. No videos were deleted, but there are 23 videos (out of 231) that may no longer be playable because their owners have made them private. Investigating what to do about those 23.
• Changed the CSS formatting of links to make them more obvious.

January 31

• Created a new profile quota that enables an organizational account to have multiple profiles and to link the accounts of other members of the organization to a shared profile. Turned on Profile Tweaks, FAQs, Profile Forums, Profile Groups, File Uploads, and Profile Pages for this quota. Visit @FBM-srl to see what this looks like. The features in this quota are going to be available to any member for a one-time setup cost of $50. For an annual fee of $50, Organizations will also be able to map a domain name to their ChocolateLife.com profile enabling them to use and brand all of the community features of TheChocolateLife.

January 23

• Added the text of Group Discussions to site-wide search and modified the Search Results pages to display them more effectively. This slows the actual search down but speeds up finding what you're looking for when the results are displayed.Overall it's a very positive improvement.
• Worked with the developers to improve the Tag Cloud module user experience. Added links to the entire tag cloud in the top nav as well to the title bar of the tag cloud block on the home page.

Cream of tartar is a buffered acid, be carefull what effect your added level has to pH.  Keep well above 4.6.  Adding corn syrup is easiest.  How much you need depends on 3 factors as they control crystallization.

- What is your final moisture level.  One percent moisture will increase or decrease the syrup phase by 3%. 

- What is the ratio of sucrose to other sugars.  From the milk (lactose) and any added corn syrup solids.

- What is the final viscosity.  More viscous requires less other sugars to doctor.

Also the colder it's stored the less sugar can stay in solution.

A traditional dulce de leche is just sugar and milk.  The cooking time is long, which continues to invert some of the sugar.  Same thing the cream of tartar does but much slower.  High moisture versions (pudding or flan like) are kept refrigerated as their Aw is too high for good shelf life.  Versions with lower moisture can be grained unless they have additional sugars (invert, corn syrup) added to increase the total solids the moisture can hold at ambient temperatures.

Clay - yeah we've been talking to Dandelion about getting testing done, especially with cacao from our farm in Guatemala as it hasn't yet been imported to the US before in any quantity.

David -

These are all very good questions.

Legally, Sacred Chocolate should not be able to call what they make chocolate because it's outside of the standard of identity for chocolate with respect to shell content.

When it comes to "raw" chocolate there is an increased risk of getting sick because pathogens that would normally be killed during roasting aren't.

Practically, the FDA is not going to do anything until a whole lot of people get sick. At that point the FDA will take a look at these chocolates and may or may not issue guidelines. I don't think that "Big Chocolate" is going to lobby for regulation as the market is too small for them to bother with. Instead they will used theit advanced manufacturing skills to create neutriceutical chocolates "improved" using extracts, as Mars does now.

One thing that many small chocolate makers may not know (but it's something I tell all my consulting clients) is that they are required to register with the FDA as a food manufacturing facility - and there are some specific things they must do, such as having a written, documented, procedure for cleaning beans and removing any metal objects before roasting. By registering with the FDA you give consent to have them inspect your facility and they can fine you or shut you down if they find things they don't like. While you might not want to invest in a formal HACCP plan, having a documented set of procedures that show that you are aware of the issues and that you have processes in place is a very good idea.

Anyone making chocolate should get their chocolate tested at a lab. Plate test, maybe heavy metals. You can specifically test for salmonella and e coli. If you are NOT doing this, you should. Contact your insurance company and see what doing this might do to reduce the cost of your general and product liability policy premiums.

Obviously a US-based opinion as that's where I'm at and where I'm going to base my opinion on, and what I'd love others to chime in on. Rather than just my opinion, I'd love to get a conversation going because I think this may be a larger issue at some point.

So I know Sacred Chocolate is somewhat of an easy target as they do both whole-bean and "raw" chocolate. I don't mean to single them out but they cover both areas I'm interested in so I'll use them as an example. Let me preface this by saying I've never tasted Sacred's stuff and for all I know it could be awesome. I have tasted other "unroasted" chocolate that was awesome.

So, shells first -

On a pure legal front, as far as I understand the FDA regulates the shell content of chocolate to 1.75% by volume:

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=163.110

Being that shells are around 20% of the weight of the bean (or more, depending on origin and a number of other factors), that would make Sacred in violation of the FDA regulation, right? So how did they even pass a health inspection?

I read the discussion  earlier last year about Paul Young's whole bean chocolate (which I guess was discontinued?) which mentioned similar concerns. But I'm only now finding out that Sacred Chocolate is currently doing this in the US. It blows my mind. And the reasons for doing it are to promote the health benefits of the shell (!). I've also seen people candy-coating whole cacao beans which makes sense from a manufacturing standpoint (who wants to hand peel tens of thousands of beans?) but not necessarily from a health standpoint.

Now, I'm of the opinion Live and Let Live and these folks are entitled to their opinions on what's healthier about eating the shell or whatever, but here's my concern and what I'd love to discuss - Say that a bunch of people get seriously ill from eating Whole Bean chocolate or Raw chocolate or some other "unconventional" chocolate. The FDA comes in and says "yeah, no we need to tighten regulations on chocolate." Suddenly the rest of us will have to jump through extra hoops when it comes to importing, warehousing, and processing raw cacao beans, even if we end up making chocolate from fully roasted, deshelled cacao. More to the point, I could totally see the Craft Chocolate movement in the US hit critical mass and finally garnering the attention of the Big Chocolate companies, who would use any illness outbreak from a small maker as a way to push additional regulations through via lobbyists, making it more difficult for us to operate. Am I being paranoid? Probably. But don't you all remember what happened with Odwalla with their unpasteurized apple juice that sickened 70 kids (and led to many of their deaths) and led to sweeping changes in the juice industry in the 90s? They felt that  unpasteurized was heathier and retained more nutrients. Sound familiar?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10049198

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_E._coli_case_from_Odwalla_juice

That's exactly the sort of thing I worry about with craft chocolate. It's pretty much a free-for-all and the fact of the matter is raw cacao beans should be a well-documented source with standardized storage and kill steps, regardless of being Raw or whatever. I personally like the fact that Big Government is out of my kitchen when it comes to my cacao processing, but I still consider this a looming issue. Hollywood regulated itself in the 1930s  specifically so the government didn't intervene. Did they go too far? Of course. The idea was ultimately abandoned. I'm just throwing out ideas because, to quote any number of movies: I have a bad feeling about this.

Fudge is a grained caramel, and can have a very wide range of acceptible recipes.  Several questions determine recipes best for your use. 

How are you making the fudge, are you hand beating on a marble slab, in a creamer?

Will you form a loaf on the table to be cut, or cast into moulds or boxes?

Are you looking for ingredient restrictions?

What shelf life are you looking for?

Sebastian -

For what it's worth, when I turned it on, I did not expect to find it in the top nav. I searched for it and searched for it ... and ended up having to ask the dev team where it was when it wasn't where I expected to be. Doh. Homer Simpson moment.

Got it - thanks.  I'm sure that was pointed out somewhere and i've just not been present enough to catch it - thanks.

Priscilla -

I am still not sure exactly what the issue is. I will change your profile quota to " chocolate maker " as I see you have a handfull of cocoa beans in your account photo. Now that you are out of the default member quota group you should be able to see the quota picker. Please let me know if you still can't.

Sebastian -

The Private Notes function is implemented. You can find it by hovering over your name in the top nav. It should be the first item.

There is a twist, however. Right now you can only send Private Notes to people who are following you. This is done to prevent spammers using the Private Notes capability. If you want to connect with someone using Private Notes, the best thing to do is to go to their Profile and Follow them. If their account is set up to accept all follow requests, the Follow button will be replaced by Following. If the member's profile is set to "Approve Followers" then the button will be set to Pending and you will get an email when they approve.

I can turn the "only send notes to followers" off, and it might make sense to do that for the next month or so as members slowly claim their accounts. I will have to think about that.

Speaking of messages - and it's probably because i'm not drinking enough coffee - but i can't for the life of me see how to send a message to someone on the new site.  I've seen reference to private messages, but it's not apparent to me how one actually sends the private message.  Is the funtionality not implimented yet, am i just getting too old to find the new technology, or is there a secret decoder ring one needs to use to find it 8-)

Hey Dave,

Yeah I was thinking about that - I figure there's no harm in experimenting since it's a spare baffle anyway. Will definitely post results once I try!

Something you could try, if you haven't already, is to use some fine sand paper to sand away the dark blotch on the metal connector.  That could fix your issue.  Or...there's a product called DexoIT electrical contact cleaner that you could use on it prior to any sandpapering.  You may just have a bad electrical contact due to oxidation.

Taking a look - notified the JR developer team member who did the data import.

The home brew chocolate group seems to be missing.

I would like to share with all you kind people a recipe I developed for peanut butter cup filling that is the rave to those who try it.

This recipe is not what you would typically find on the web; recipes which contain graham crackers, butter, vanilla and store bought peanut butter.

Nope, this recipes contains freshly ground dry roasted unsalted peanuts, 10X sugar, dextrose and salt (the same ingredients found on that leading brand).

So here are the ingredients for a nice sized batch of filling (about 14 large cups):

200 g dry roasted, unsalted peanuts

40 g confectioners sugar

40 g Dextrose

6 g salt

Directions:

1. Grind the peanut on a course setting if using a peanut butter maker. I have several Salton peanut butter makers. I love that machine unfortunately, they are no longer manufactured, that is why i have several from Ebay. If you don't have a peanut butter maker, you can make the peanut butter using a blender. It will take about 5 minutes to make the peanut butter and you will haver to push the peanuts down towards the blade from time to time until it starts to get creamy. Make sure the blender is OFF when pushing the peanut down. Here is an important tip for the correct texture. Take about 40 g of the 200g peanuts (before you grind them) and pulse 5 to 7 times in the blender and put the slivers aside for later.
2. Finish grinding the balance of the peanut (160 g) and in a bowl, combine the slivers and the peanut butter.
3. Add the sugar, Dextrose and salt to the mixture.
4. Throughly mix. It will be stiff at first but after a few minutes of setting, the filling will become soft and glossy.
5. Put the filling aside while you prepare the chocolate.
6. Now, this is where your imagination takes over, enjoy!

Filling Tips (done by hand):

1. Place a peanut butter cup paper liner (about 1 inch diameter) in a larger container. I use a 1/2 cup measuring cup. You will see why in a moment.
2. Pour about 1 teaspoon of chocolate on the bottom of the liner. You can adjust this amount based on the size of the liner you use.
3. Grab the handle of the measuring cup and gently shake the cup until the chocolate settles flat.
4. Drop 1/2 tablespoon of filling into the cup on top of the chocolate.
5. Shake the cup back and forth with a quick motion. This will cause the filling to settle, spread to the sides of the cup and force the chocolate up the sides ofthe liner.
6. Pour about 1 teaspoon of chocolate on top of the filling and spread with the back of the spoon to cover the filling.
7. Again, shake the cup back and forth until the chocolate is perfectly flat on the top.
8. Remove from measurng cup and let cool and repeat steps 1 through 7.
9. If you have a vibrating table, you can use that instead of shaking the cup by hand. Also, don't shake so hard that the liner flys out of the measuring cup. I already did that.
10. Following this procedure will yield you perfectly flat topped peanut butter cups with just the right amount of chocolate on the sides, bottom and top.

Well, I you enjoy this recipe, if you love peanut butter cups (like the leading brand) you will certainly love these. Also, you can make giant cups or other candy molds. You are not limited to just paper liners.

Best Regards,

Joe C.

I ended up swapping the belt and gears on a Wonder last night and took lots of photos. Will post this weekend!

David -

I am sure that everyone here on TheChocolateLife (and elsewhere) would appreciate an instructable on these sorts of repairs and maintenance. Looking forward to seeing the first.

Desert Indulgence. I like it.

Potomac Chocolate:
@clay: not having to tip the melanger to empty it sounds very nice.

Ben -

Just one of the little things we took a careful look at as we were designing the machine. The fact that bowl comes apart in two pieces so that you can remove it completely is unique. While we wanted it to be efficient (i.e., get to particle size fast) that was not the only aspect of usability that concerned us.