Forum Activity for @Nicole Gnutzman

Thanks, Jeremy, for reaching out amongst all your busyness! I did really want a Hilliard and DeRhonda's came to the rescue. Good luck with your new business. 

Thanks to everyone who reached out to me in one form or another. I did find a used Dedy thanks to Clay, so I'm set.

Can you please send me some pictures to:  gerencia@chocostudio.pe     Thank you!

Hi, can you please send me some pics from your Little Dipper to:   gerencia@chocostudio.pe     Best regards,

excellent, thank you both for your help in answering my chocolate dilemmas. :D

For your 70% dark bar - essentially yes. Usually the 30% is made up of sugar (majority), lecithin (~<0.5%) and vanilla or vanillan (~<1%).

White chocolate has cocoa butter - usually in the 28-35% range (but it can be outside that range). So it is typically a 28-35% chocolate because the only cocoa solids are the cocoa butter (because as you note, their is no liquor). It is not 100% cocoa solids because there is also sugar, milk powder, vanilla, lecithin etc

thank you @larry2

in fact you are right, it is actually 99% dark chocolate. i said 100% for simplicity.

ok, im gonna push it and ask another one (or two) on the subject. :D

so, when they say its a 70% dark chocolate bar, is that 70% cacao liquor +/ butter (solids) and 30% anything else?

what about white chocolate? it has no liquor, but it has cacao butter ... why is it called white chocolate and not 100% too?

why is it so confusing? lol

Cocoa butter extraction is done after roasting the beans.

To extract cocoa butter from cacao beans, the beans are roasted, cracked to help separate the shells from the nib. (The sells are a significant source of the nasties mentioned by gap.) After cracking, the nibs and shells are winnowed to separate the nib (broken beans) and the shell.

The nibs are then ground into Chocolate Liqour. Chocolate Liquor can be pressed to expell the cocoa butter. The grinding process helps allow the cooca butter to separate out.

The leftover cake of non-cocoa butter can be ground into cocoa powder. Thus as Gap said, you can think of cocoa beans as cocoa powder and cocoa butter. Cocoa butter and cocoa powder are just beans in a different form.

Re: the different fat content of your beans vs. 100% bar. The bar has a higher fat content. This could indicate the manufacturer added cocoa butter to thier recipe for 100% chocolate. It could also mean the beans they are using have a higher fat content, or it could simply mean they developed thier nutritional data table from different sources or methods. I suspect the latter is the more accurate diagnosis given the variance in saturated fat quantity, carbohydrate quantities between them. The manufacturer or producer may not have sufficient budget to outsource their products for detailed testing so the accuracy of the nurtritional tables you posted is suspect in my mind.  

Mariano,

How interested are you in the little dipper? I haven't heard any more from you ince your post on 7/18.

after the cacao beans are roasted, do they contain any butter?
is roasting done after the separation of cacao butter from cacao bean (by pressing) or before?

thanks so much @gap. you did explain that very well.

Think of cocoa beans as made up of cocoa powder and cocoa butter. That is what you're eating when you eat beans. The amount of cocoa butter can vary between ~48%-56% depending on where the beans are from. 

A 100% chocolate bar is made from 100% cocoa solids. This could either be 100% cocoa beans (usually that have been roasted) or any combination of cocoa beans and cocoa butter (both are considered cocoa solids and are added together to get the 100% number). Often, but not always, commercial bar makers add additional cocoa butter to a 100% bar - so the bar may be 90% beans/10% ccb or 80% beans/20% ccb.

As for which is more healthy - there is plenty written on this forum and others stating that raw cocoa beans are not a healthy option (google it if you want more info). There are plenty of nasties on raw cocoa beans which are killed by roasting. Also, some people consider cocoa butter (in the right quantities) to be a "healthy" fat which seems to run contrary to your comment above. All depends what you're aiming to get from eating chocolate I guess.

Hi guys, I need to pick your brains on this.

So, I've been hearing people talking about cacao beans (not nibs), to nibble on. I bought a packet for myself to see what's the hype. I usually eat 100% Dark Chocolate ... no emulsifiers, no vegetable fats, no butter, no milk.

Cacao butter is obtained from whole cacao beans, which are fermented, roasted, and then separated from their hulls. About 54–58% of the residue is butter.

Am I right in thinking that the Raw Cacao Beans have Cacao Butter in them, making them less "healthy"? Is it a marketing hype or am I missing something? Some people even "roast them slightly", to give them a classic chocolate taste ... to me, roasting is yet another "kill" of nutritional value, making them closer to a processed 100% chocolate bar, but with a worse taste.

My question is, are Raw Cacao Beans any healthier / better than 100% Dark Chocolate Bars?

The nutritional value of "raw cacao beans", which I bought, has the following nutritional facts (per 100g):

Energy (kcal) ... 583
Fats (g) ... 43,5
- of which Saturated (g) ... 0
Total Carbohydrates (g) ... 35,1
- of which sugars (g) ... 0
Fibre (g) ... 0
Protein (g) ... 12,8
Sodium (mg) ... 0

The nutritional value of the 100% Dark Chocolate Bar (per 100g):

Energy (kcal) ... 609,29
Fats (g) ... 54,82
- of which Saturated (g) ... 33,89
Total Carbohydrates (g) ... 0,81
- of which sugars (g) ... 0,8
Fibre (g) ... 0
Protein (g) ... 11,86
Sodium (mg) ... 0,02

I have to agree!! The EZ has simplified my production, also.

Hi, I've been roasting in a convection oven and doing alright I guess, but I am switching to a drum roaster and was hoping you all could share your final roasting temps?  Thanks!

Hi All-

Although I have tons of experience tempering commercial chocolate, I have had a lot of trouble tempering the chocolate I am making from the bean.  And I am getting ready to start commercial production so I was looking for a way that my staff could easily temper using a machine or by hand, and how I could explain it to them if I couldn't do it myself.  My future staff is likely to have no formal education and even if I had thousands of dollars to buy an automatic tempering machine, I thought it might be hard to train them to take care of it properly.   Anyway, I saw an article about the eztemper machine, and thought, can it really be that easy?  

Yes, it is.  It is amazing!  I pulled the cocoa mass out of the melangers and put into a bowl.  I let it sit for a couple hours until it was 32-33 degrees celcius and added the 1% of seed cocoa butter from the eztemper.  I stirred well and poured directly into molds.  My chocolate came out perfect!  Its going to be so easy for me to train staff with this machine!  So worth the money.  

So, yes, its super awesome!  

Thank you!

The Camera was a Nikon D3S

And the lenses:

Most of the pictures (75%) I took with the
AF-S NIKKOR 24–70 mm 1:2,8G ED

All the macro shots are taken with the
AF-S Micro-NIKKOR 60 mm 1:2,8 (the old one)

And only a few with the
AF-S NIKKOR 70–200 mm 1:2,8G ED VR II

Thanks,
Jochen

That's some impresive photographic and descriptive work! Could you share the camera equipment/lens used?

Sure, Clay: http://www.effector.ch/products_e.htm

I should use the smallest, 6 ltr basin. I see that they call it dipping maschine, I would be tempering and dipping with the same one.

I heve never heard of this type of tempering machine. Can you please post a link to it on the manufacturer's web site?

I'm interested in the Little Dipper. How long have you had it in use? Please send information to Jennifer@ExVotoChocolates.com. Thank you!

Hi Patrick, I am also interested. Please email info to Jennifer@ExVotoChocolates.com. Thank you,

Patrick,

I'm certainly interested as well, if you're able to send any pictures/location/ etc to BlueTableChocolates@gmail.com.

ben Johnson

hello,

do you have an email for the contact? we are interested.

or pm.

THIS ITEM IS SOLD>

I have recently upgraded to a continuous tempering machine and am looking to sell my little dipper. I will let it go for $950 OBO and I will cover shipping within the US.

Please feel free - and thank you!

Jochen

Results of experiments so far - http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151287-eztemper-the-help-you-need-to-achieve-perfectly-tempered-chocolate-fast/?p=2024120

That really is very nice. Do you mind if we share the link around?

You could make a nice thin transfer sheet under chablon piece and place it over the marks.

Hi Kerry,

I will try the different suggestions, although i may just end up leaving it with the weird cirle in the centre for now as the rest has a nice glaze, until i can afford some polycarbonate ones to be made.

Nicely done! I really enjoyed that!

Beautiful! Thank you.

Hello colleagues, I need your advice: I should start using Effector tempering machine: If you use it, do you melt all different sorts of chocolate to 45 C and simply cool down by seeding? Do you use fast mode in melting? If you keep your chocolate warm in it overnight, in which temperature? Which amount of chocolate would be best to melt in it? Full? Any other useful tips? Thank you so much for your help!

That is a great photo journal - thank you very much for sharing

Hi there!

I visited the cocoa in Bahia, Brasil and made a photographic documentary out of it: 

Link to the documentary click here! Enjoy!

Rgds.,
Jochen

I will delve deeper, a quick look on the web sight only stated Canada/USA, thank you 

I will delve deeper, a quick look on the web sight only stated Canada/USA, thank you 

The EZtemper ships worldwide and works with all voltages. It's the only one of it's kind in the world in this price range!

Does anyone know of a similar unit available in the UK? I have been looking at an automatic tempering machine to help speed the process up but this looks like it would be a lot more useful to me overall. Any advice would be much appreciated