Actually making your own chocolate !

[trinder]

I saw this utube video and was curious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvGXslu2dxE
I am asking for your advice.
I want to know is it going to be expensive or cheap tasting chocolate ? also Is it questionable health wise? I ask this question because I did not know exactly what vegetable shortening was and so did a google search (having previously thought it was a posh name for lard) and some information was flagged that made me cautious.

If any of you are able to reassure me that this is okay/safe, I am keen to try the recipe because it seems so simple.
How impressive ( read taking back the skill from the big chocolate manufacturers) that would be. To be able to make for my friends chocolate!

[The Riff-Raff Element]

If any of you are able to reassure me that this is okay/safe, I am keen to try the recipe because it seems so simple.
How impressive ( read taking back the skill from the big chocolate manufacturers) that would be. To be able to make for my friends chocolate!

Depends what you mean by safe

Vegetable shortening is lard substitute. It can come from a number of sources - refined palm oil, coconut oil or hydrogenated vegetable oil - but all are very high in saturated fat, which is why they are solid at room temperature and why they will produce a solid chocolate. They are also cheap and easy to use.

Cheap chocolate is often made using vegetable oil because it is cheap itself: good chocolate uses cocoa butter, which smells of chocolate and is also loaded with saturated fat, but the chemical makeup is nonetheless a bit different. Palm oil, coconut oil contain high levels the fat palmitic acid, which comes with all kinds of health-related baggage; HVO can be high in trans-fats, which are equally ugly.

Cocoa butter, on the other hand, is very high in steric acid, and this fatty acid is considered to be amongst the most healthy of the saturated fats and may even (in moderation) help lower "bad" cholesterol. It is possible to buy cocoa butter online if nowhere else - it's good for soap making too.

I've started making Nutella substitute at home to avoid feeding the kids to much palm oil: it's not difficult and the results are pretty good - I can't see why that chap's method for making chocolate wouldn't work too.

[trinder]

Thanks Jon, I use lard to make chips so have used it many times. I do like cheap chocolate but the knowledge that that is why chocolate is so fattening has never had such a clear link before. Suddenly I am a bit put off. So thanks

[demi]

Jon, can you give me your recipe for nutella please? The chocolate spread they have here is awful and full of god knows what. I think it's Turkish, very bad quality. Would love to make it myself! :)

[Ellendra]

If you need your chocolate to be a little more solid, you can melt a little beeswax into it. Just make sure it's pure beeswax, which is edible. Some candy makers use paraffin wax, which works, but I'd be leery of it.

[Ellendra]

Oh, and to really bring out the chocolate flavor, soak a vanilla bean in a bottle of almond or other nut oil for a month, then add a teaspoon of the oil to whatever fat you're using to make the cocolate with.

PS: This probably doesn't need to be said, but just in case there are beginners reading, don't use butter for the shortening when making block chocolate or chocolate candies. Butter has too much water mixed in, and you'll end up with a tasty-but-lumpy mess.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Home made "Nutella" version 3.0:

270g toasted hazelnuts - just give them 10/15 minutes in a hot oven if you've got raw nuts;
150g good quality cocoa;
40g milk powder;
70g icing sugar (it needs to be icing sugar to get the texture right);
About 3 tablespoons sunflower oil;


Blitz the hazelnuts to nut butter texture in a magimix or similar. This can take a few minutes, but they must be pulverised to a smooth paste. Add all the solid ingredients and blitz again, then dribble in the oil until a nice homogeneous paste is achieved.

This works well with peanuts too. It stores in the cupboard or the fridge, but obviously it is more solid in the fridge. I'm going to experiment with milk chocolate as the solid ingredient next and also with cocoa butter as the fat.

[becks77]

Rushes off to buy ingrediants thanks Jon