Subscribe

Archive | process

Remy and the Chocolate Chip

June 18, 2020 by

For as long as chef Lisa Vega has been with Dandelion Chocolate, Maybe The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookie has been part of our DNA. For years, our chocolate chips were made in-house by the kitchen team, who hand-piped over 50 pounds of tempered discs a week. That is, until recently, when the Large Chip was born.

To learn the “making of” story we spoke with Remy Labesque, a talented industrial designer and good friend of ours who collaborated with Chef Lisa and the production team to make the perfect chocolate chip. Remy met Todd when he attended a Chocolate 101 class some years ago and so began a lasting friendship. Remy was working at Frog Design at the time (he’s now at Tesla) and he jumped at the opportunity to re-design the chocolate chip.

When the large chip was launched in May, Remy walked us through his creative process which led to the birth of these geometric beauties.

“The chip project began about three years ago. If my memory serves me, it was driven in large part by pastry chef Lisa Vega, who wanted something specifically tailored for her recipes. There are two chip designs: large and small (the large was released first, and the small will be at a later date). Their mass (3.5 grams and 0.8 grams, respectively), was driven by Lisa, and the prototypes were tested along the way in her recipes as part of the R&D process. Another consideration was that we also needed something that could be enjoyed as a chocolate-eating experience completely by itself — that’s where our unique shape comes into play.

“The shape of a typical store-bought chocolate chip is an arbitrary result of the industrial manufacturing process used to make it. As you might expect, a drop of molten chocolate is deposited onto a flat surface and left to cool. Chocolate chip taste varies widely by brand, but the shape of the chips does not.

“The shape of our chip is faceted: The edges of a Dandelion Chocolate chip taper to thin-as-we could-make-’em without compromising structure. This is because the thermal mass of a thin piece of chocolate melts more quickly on the palate. So when you put a Dandelion chip on your tongue, the thin, chiseled edges warm-to-melt nearly instantly. The 3D shape, while simple, we believe is also novel. And this is noteworthy because the world of industrial design is running out of simple forms that haven’t been claimed for something already. Beyond that we’re proud to have optimized the chocolate chip eating experience as a result of rethinking the humble shape itself.”

While the chip was created for baking, many of us at Dandelion Chocolate have reached for them to nibble because the mouthfeel is different from our bars; but make no mistake, there is nothing like the taste when these chips are baked in a gigantic chocolate chip cookie.

The chips are being released by origin, and the first two are especially suited to baking and confections:
Costa Esmeraldas from Ecuador, 70%, 2018 Harvest, with notes of chocolate buttercream frosting and banana; and Hacienda Azul from Costa Rica, 70%, 2019 Harvest, with notes of chocolate almond biscotti and buttery caramel.

We want to thank Remy for bringing his know-how and love of chocolate to the project. It’s great to finally to be able to share his story with you.

Our Chocolate is Now Kosher-Certified!

March 9, 2020 by

[et_pb_section][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text]Leah has been our Culinary Liaison since 2017. She introduces our cocoa ingredients to professional chefs, bakers, baristas, and brewers across the country. This is her first post for the blog, and she’s going to share the story of how and why she obtained a kosher certification for our single-origin, one-and-two-ingredient chocolate.

a row of Dandelion Chocolate bars

My mom had been nudging me about getting Dandelion Chocolate kosher-certified since my first day on the job. Mom’s always right, right? In fact, I attribute my career in the food industry to her because baking together has always been our weekly tradition. 

My family keeps a kosher kitchen, which means that in our house, we never mix any dairy products (milk, cheese, butter, etc.) with any meat products (beef, chicken) within the same meal. This means cheeseburgers or ice cream after a chicken dinner are big no-no’s. We also look for kosher symbols on packaged food to inform us that the ingredients are in alignment with our family’s dietary laws. There are many different kosher symbols, but some of them look like this:

kosher certification

Growing up, the chocolate options for dessert were fairly limited. For as long as I can recall, Scharffen Berger had been our best bet. (Parenthetically, our company’s own early history began soon after “Big Chocolate” bought Scharffen Berger.) Both my mom and I have always seen the opportunity for Dandelion Chocolate in the kosher market. And after receiving a couple of wholesale inquiries from kosher-certified businesses who were interested in buying our chocolate, I justified researching what the kosher certification process would mean for us.

I had hoped the certification process for our chocolate would be simple since we only use two ingredients—cocoa beans and organic cane sugar. This also designates our chocolate as pareve, meaning it’s not made with dairy or any animal derivatives and it can therefore be eaten with any meal. Furthermore, our chocolate-making equipment wasn’t previously used for non-kosher production. 

I was connected to Rabbi Welton of the Vaad of Northern California, a.k.a. Sunrise Kosher, through the Illuminoshi, the not-so-secret society of SF Bay Area Jews who work in food. Caitlin, our Director of Production and I gave Rabbi Welton a tour of both of our San Francisco production facilities (Valencia Street and 16th Street) so he could see the process, the equipment, and the product first-hand. 

Soon thereafter, we received our official kosher certification. It has been effective since August 2019, and it applies to both of our SF factories and to all of the one- and two-ingredient cocoa bean and chocolate products we make (single-origin chocolate bars, cocoa nibs, ground chocolate, Chef’s Chocolate, whole roasted beans, single-bottles of Hot Chocolate Mix, and our soon-to-come chocolate chips). 

Sunrise Kosher is based in the East Bay, and its accreditation is accepted nationally by kosher consumers who abide by varying degrees of kosher stringency. We’re planning to update our packaging (hopefully in late 2020), at which point we’ll revisit adding the kosher symbol. Until then, we have the digital certification to show for it! 

One might say we’re celebrating a “Bar” Mitzvah! My mom and I say mazel tov to that.

 

Kosher Certification

 [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

Flavor in Chocolate: The Not-So-Secret Secrets Of Becoming A Great Taster 

October 1, 2019 by

Karen, our Flavor Manager, will openly and unapologetically tell you that she regularly eats chocolate for breakfast. She’s been a part of our team since 2013; first as a chocolate maker, then managing chocolate making, and now, managing flavor. In her current role, she gets to taste her way through the day as she helps build the systems and processes that encourage the development and preservation of our flavor.

This blog post is part one of a four-part series on flavor in chocolate. Karen will answer some of the most-asked questions around what we taste, how flavor happens, and how we as chocolate makers approach flavor in our process and in our bars.

Dandelion Chocolate team tasting chocolate

We believe that chocolate is absolute magic. Becoming a great taster, however, is not.

As Flavor Manager since 2017, one of my absolute favorite things to do is to run our internal tasting training that we call Flavorientation. (And if you’re interested, we also offer a class in Tasting for the public.) Here I get the opportunity to meet each and every new taster in our growing team and use this unique moment to impart to them this one simple fact: 

If you want to be a great taster, all you’ve got to do is practice. 

In class, I keep the group size small, inviting no more than six people at a time to the table. This is purposefully done to create a safe space so that our new tasters can exercise this sometimes new and awkward-feeling muscle: the palate. I take them through a series of tasting exercises where I highlight the nuanced impact that both large and small changes in our raw product, production processes, and makers can have on the final flavor of a chocolate bar. I work hard to crack open the exciting world of flavor to our new team members. 

As with any table full of new tasters, there is often at least one individual around the tasting table that says something like, “I’m terrible at tasting! I don’t taste a single thing that everyone else seems to be getting!”

Taking notes while tasting chocolate

If there is one piece of advice that I can give to anyone wanting to be a great taster, it would be to stop comparing yourself to those around you. I know, I know! That can be like asking some of you to stop writing with your dominant hand; awkward and unnatural. However, remember that comparison stifles your own experience and hinders your ability to practice pulling up your own unique aromatic memories buried deep within your consciousness. 

Aromatic memories are, in large part, the things that breath life and brightness into your memories of that magical tropical vacation or the warm fuzzy feelings you have toward your favorite holiday. Aromatic memories can transport us miles in an instant with one whiff of the nostalgic. 

This is what makes chocolate magical. Chocolate is known as one of the most aromatically complex things out there. The possible combinations of the chemical compounds within chocolate are essentially endless. Couple this with the fact that, unlike other craft industries like coffee or beer, chocolate, consumable by any age group, has typically woven itself into our earliest childhood memories. More often than not, understanding our connection to chocolate is so entangled within the story of our lives that it is near impossible to find its source.  

This is one of the main reasons I absolutely love what I get to do here. I get to hear people’s life stories framed by their unique and deeply personal tasting notes. I get to literally hear them unpack some of their most potent experiences as they practice naming and identifying the aromas that have framed their lives. 

Magic. 

So next time you sit down to a meal, walk through your local farmers market, or step into your favorite relative’s kitchen, take a second and breathe deeply. These are the things your chocolate memories are made of! 

A bowl of chocolate ready to taste

4000 Years and Counting: A History of Drinking Chocolate

February 16, 2019 by

Amie Bailey is the General Manager of our soon-to-open 16th Street Factory, and she just started with us in January, 2019. She is a food blogger, a pastry chef, a hyper-organized person, and a fan of chocolate in all of its drinkable (and non-drinkable) forms.

Dandelion Chocolate hot chocolate and cacao podsFor most of my childhood, the process of making hot chocolate started by opening a packet. I, for one, have always loved that aroma coming from the little foil envelope that can only be described as “sweet.”

These days I’m more likely to be enjoying a Mission Hot Chocolate at our Valencia cafe, or whisking up our Hot Chocolate Mix at home, and as a result I’ve been digging into the history of drinking chocolate. While bars of chocolate and confections are available around the world, historically we as humans have preferred drinking our chocolate over biting into a bar.

Let’s go back about 4000 years to 3300 BCE to prehistoric South America, in what is now known as Ecuador. In October of 2018, archeologists from UC Berkeley uncovered ceramic pots from the Mayo-Chincipe people with traces of cacao residue on them, making chocolate one of the oldest beverages known to humanity.

The Maya continued the tradition of drinking chocolate and passed it along generation after generation. It took many centuries for the Maya (and then the Aztec) people to develop the techniques for making chocolate into a beverage worthy of the devotion we pay it even today. Highly prized, chocolate was a reward, a sacrifice, a currency, and sometimes exclusive to royalty and the military (Montezuma II reportedly drank 50 golden goblets of hot chocolate per day).

It’s tempting to think that chocolate was only for the wealthy in ancient lands, but in ancient South and Central America, chocolate was truly a group activity. It’s a lot of work to grow, harvest, ferment, roast, and grind chocolate into a paste and then convert it into a drink. Our melangers refine our chocolate for four to five days after we roast and winnow the beans (depending on the origin), and they run on electricity! Imagine doing that by hand! Consequently, and up until very recently in history, chocolate has been hard to come by. While maybe not *everyone* got 50 cups per day in Mesoamerica, it’s likely that everyone got a taste of it.

Chocolate was also a decidedly different experience back then. None of these cultures grew and processed sugar, and honey was harvested in the wild and by chance. Chocolate wasn’t just “not sweet”; it was pretty bitter – more akin to coffee than what we think of hot chocolate. It was also mixed with a variety of spices, vanilla, ground corn, or almonds.

None of these cultures were traditional herding cultures either, so the chocolate was made with water rather than milk. The texture came from pouring it from cup to cup to create foam. Today, Mexican Hot Chocolate is made with a molinillo, and the foam is considered particularly desirable.

Cruising right up to 1500 AD, the Spanish invade and conquer these cultures in a brutal fashion, taking not just their gold, but their cacao (and the skills they developed to make it into chocolate) as well. Cortez presented cacao for the first time in Europe, and from there drinking chocolate found favor and fame throughout the continent. Sometime in the 17th century Europeans began to eschew adding spicy chili pepper to their drink in favor of sugar, which was expensive but available.  

The pirate botanist (what a job title!) William Hughes published a book in 1672 titled The American Physitian that devoted an entire chapter to “The Cacao Nut Tree” and the ways in which it could be prepared for drinking, going so far as to call it “The American Nectar.”

In the 18th century, we see chocolate houses rising right alongside London’s famed coffee houses as places to gather, gamble, and carouse. At this time and in these places, chocolate had reached its most opulent form to date, with sugar being bountiful and using dairy instead of water to make the beverage. Many of these places still exist in London today and you can see them, or at least the outside. White’s is one of the best known. This is where Prince Charles had his bachelor party, and it does not admit any woman other than The Queen of England. You can also view The Cocoa Tree on Pall Mall in St. James’s London which is now The Royal Automobile Club.

17th century British chocolate house

17th century British chocolate house

From there, mass availability followed lock step with the industrial revolution. It wasn’t THE first thing to be made in a factory, but it was really close. In 1828, Dutch chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten invented the process of extracting the cocoa butter from chocolate leaving a cake that is pulverized into powder. With this invention we enter the era of Hot Cocoa (made from cocoa powder) taking the lead over Hot Chocolate (made from the paste of cocoa nibs) and making the drink widely available (unless you were a very, very lucky child) and what we all grew up with.

With small-batch and bean-to-bar chocolate gaining a wider and wider audience, I think we live in one of the best times for enjoying Theobroma cacao, the scientific name for chocolate, meaning “food of the gods” in ancient Greek. From enjoying single-origin chocolate bars to drinking a spicy Mission Hot Chocolate at our cafés, I hope you’ll join us at our shops or online to explore.

Learn more about the history of chocolate.

Resources:

Science Magazine Online: World’s Oldest Chocolate Was Made 5300 Years Ago – In a South American Rainforest

Smithsonian Magazine Online, What We Know About the Earliest History of Chocolate

Gastro Obscura, The Rambunctious, Elitist Chocolate Houses of 18th-Century London

Cooking In the Archives

Chocolate Class, Enlightenment-Era Chocolate/Coffee Houses

Pleasant Vices Video on Making Mayan Style Hot Chocolate in the 18th Century Manner

Hot Chocolate, William Hughes’s ‘American Nectar

A Note About Tempering

September 21, 2017 by

Let’s start with this: I’m not a chocolate tempering master or god. It would be great to be one, because that would make my amazing job go a lot smoother. If you have ever tempered chocolate, then you know that it’s tricky business. At Dandelion, we’ve learn a lot as we go, and because others have helped me understand this whole process, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned. What I’m about to write is from my personal experience, including my failures and those few times I have actually succeeded.

Before I joined Dandelion, I worked for a huge chocolatier making confections. That was my first job here in US, after moving from Guatemala, and among all the new words I was learning at the time, ‘temper’ was one of them. My supervisor used to use the word in nearly every single sentence, but I didn’t exactly know what he was trying to say. I associated the word with the fact that we were decreasing and increasing the temperature of huge tanks of about 200 or more pounds of “Belgian” chocolate. My tasks were also obscure; bring the chocolate up to 80°F (~27°C), then down again between 86 (30°C) to 89°F (32°C) degrees. Then, do a test with the temper meter and if the reading was in the appropriate range, I was allowed to open the valves so the chocolate could start circulating around the pipes. That’s pretty basic and kind of covers the whole process but there’s a lot more behind that simple and innocent word: temper.

THE NITTY GRITTY

Structurally and chemically speaking, the fat (read: cocoa butter) in chocolate can exist in six crystal forms and most of them are unusable when it comes to making finished products, like truffles or chocolate bars. The point of tempering is to establish the crystal structure we want by changing the temperature of the chocolate in phases. Let me explain.

Forms 1 (I) and 2 (II) are crumbly in texture and to the bite. The snap is non-existent and the chocolate melts easily, almost too easily. Forms 3 (III) and 4 (IV) will have a good snap and the texture will be more consistent, but then the appearance will be a little dull or matte and will still melt too quickly on your hands or in your mouth. Form 5 (V) crystals are the crystals we are looking for. This form of crystal will maintain its quality and structure over time, giving the chocolate a nice glossy finish and the firm snap we’re looking for. The chocolate will melt around body temperature. It is said that when chocolate is in good temper, you feel a nice cooling sensation in your mouth. This sensation happens because some of the crystals present in the cocoa butter (a natural fat found in cocoa beans) melt just below our body temperature, and the phase change from solid to liquid absorbs some of the mouth’s heat energy. Form 6 (VI) crystals have a higher melting temperature and only form when a chocolate in Form 5 (V) has been left for a long time—in our experience, at least a year. At that point, the crystal form actually shifts to Form 6 (VI).

So, now you’re probably wondering how you reach this type of crystal. Remember that range I mentioned  in the beginning? That’s part of how you do it, but it is not as simple as it looks. There are many other factors involved.

The tempering process starts with warm, or as we sometimes call it, molten chocolate. I usually start somewhere around 105°F (about 41°C), but some people will suggest starting above 115°F (46°C) just to be sure you’ve melted all of the crystals out. At this point, the chocolate will be liquid due to the fatty content of cocoa beans, cocoa butter, being fully melted. In this first step, most of the crystals are melted and non-fat particles—meaning particles that are not cocoa butter— are floating all over the place haphazardly without structure. Next, I would decrease the temperature to somewhere between 80°F (27°C) and 82°F (~28°C). At this temperature, the chocolate will start becoming more viscous because the crystals have begun to form structures; some weak (Forms I-IV) and some strong (Form V).  

From this step onwards it is absolutely necessary to continuously stir the chocolate for two reasons: a) stirring promotes the growth of crystals and b) it helps to keep the chocolate from growing the wrong sort of crystals too quickly (in other words, solidifying). To get rid of those weak structures that developed while the chocolate was cooling, we raise the temperature back up again to 86°F-89°F (30°C-32°C), depending somewhat on the origin of your beans. This will help to melt the weak crystals off and, if done right, crystal Form V will largely prevail among the other crystals and the chocolate will be considered in temper. This works because every crystal type has a different melting point. In the process, you’re melting everything, then allowing a few types to form as the chocolate cools, and then remelting every type except Form 6 (VI) which, you’ll remember, only forms when chocolate in Form V sits for a matter of months.

I usually think about tempering like opening a new set of assorted building bricks where you have strong and weak bricks. In my head, these bricks (crystals) are in a big bucket (bowl) without organization and without structure (molten chocolate). To start building, you will need to organize them (crystallization) and remove the weak bricks (raise temperature) . By the time you finish you will have a nice solid structure of the organized, stronger bricks (Form V).

THE CHALLENGES

The ambient room temperature also plays an important factor in how easy or difficult tempering can be. Some people say that a good ambient room temperature for tempering is around 70°F to 72°F (21°C to 22°C) with 40% humidity, maximum. Sometimes, due to our open space, we have to tweak our tempering temperatures according to the weather. If it is cold and rainy we know the chocolate will start solidifying on us faster. If it is sunny and looks like the perfect day to be at the beach, we will probably be struggling trying to get the chocolate to stay cooler.

And then comes the ingredient factor. Our chocolate has only two ingredients (organic cane sugar and cocoa beans) which makes our chocolate a little different, not only in flavor, but it also drastically changes the way we handle it and temper it. Our chocolate varies in thickness according to where it comes from—the further from the equator, the lower the fat content of the bean, and the higher the viscosity. For example, our chocolate from Madagascar is more viscous than our chocolate from Mantuano, in Venezuela. This is the reason we can’t temper all our origins at the same temperature.We can’t lower the temperature too much on an already viscous chocolate because it will crystallize faster, so we will  keep it warmer and lower the temperature on a runny chocolate.

I guess this is the main difference when it comes to our chocolate. Our chocolate is often more viscous than the chocolate in pastries, the culinary world, or even other chocolate maker’s bars because many of them add cocoa butter or lecithin, and other ingredients that keep the chocolate thin and runny, and easier to temper.

OUR EQUIPMENT

Although my team uses a tempering machine, most of the time it’s not a walk in the park. Our tempering machine holds 25 kilograms, and works in three stages; keeping the temperature high on the first stage, lowering it on the second, and finally rising it on the third stage. The chocolate is transported from the bowl through a cooling column with an auger that works like an Archimedean Screw.  After this cooling column there’s a pipe where the chocolate is heated again and it comes out “almost” in temper.

THE THING ABOUT EQUIPMENT…

Why almost? If there’s something I have learned through the years is that you can not rely completely on a machine. I talked to you about the three stages, but our machine only uses two of those. That’s partially because our tempering machine is so complex (with so many settings we don’t use) and partially because there’s little to almost no instructions on how to operate it.There’s also the weather factor that pushes us to adjust our settings from round to round of tempering (we do two to three rounds a day, making about 600 to 700 bars on average).

OUR TEAM

Due to all these challenges, my teammates (more like family) have learned to temper and “fix” it, which to us means recovering the chocolate either from over crystallization (over temper) or falling out of temper. There are still times when we are unsuccessful and need to call the tempering round to an end. We have learned so much together that we have a really strong team, who genuinely care that you have the best experience possible when eating our chocolate. So, the next time you visit us and watch us work, cheer on the guys tempering (besides, we love to see you around and answer any questions you might have).

A BIT ABOUT HAND TEMPERING

Recently, we were encouraged to start learning a new skill: hand tempering. This skill is pretty much an art, and it takes knowledge and patience to master it. While the machine uses all sorts of electronic components, hand tempering requires bowls, offset spatulas, regular spatulas, thermometers, and a marble slab. The general process is the same (melt the crystals, let them form, melt out all but Form V),  but hand tempering takes a whole different kind of skill set.

We only hand temper sample batches because if we attempted to hand temper all of our chocolate, it would take us forever to produce the number of bars we produce today. 

To do it, we pour molten chocolate on a marble slab, scrape it around with a metal bench scraper to encourage the crystals to form, and then mix it with a small amount of molten chocolate to warm it up again, melting everything but Form V. Personally, I like the hand tempering process. Although it can get a little messy, it feels more personal, challenging, and even if 90% of the time you won’t get it right, when you do, you get that feeling of accomplishment that makes you smile from ear to ear.

So, overall, tempering is really challenging because you need to be as precise as possible, butIs it worth attempting? YES. Your chocolate not will only look better and be more enticing, but it will take your mouth on a different, slow-melting flavor journey. If you’re interested in learning more about tempering, pre-order our new book Making Chocolate, or stay tuned for our newest class all about tempering!

 

Education Station: What’s Up with Whole Roasted Beans?

July 28, 2017 by

You’re curious, so we find answers. Our education team fields lots of questions from our guests during classes, so we’ve decided to launch a  series of monthly installments in which we tackle some of those questions and share the answers with the world. We call it The Education Station. This week, Robert addresses some questions about a product we sell in our cafes, and what to do with them.

At Dandelion Chocolate, most people know us for our chocolate bars, drinks, and pastries,  but the one item our customers seem to be most curious about lately are whole roasted beans. We sell bags of them in our cafés, and after spending most of my time working at the Ferry Building as a cafe associate, I’ve heard a lot of questions about them: “Are those coffee beans?” or “Is that where chocolate comes from?” and of course, “What do I do with them?” Well, now is the time to grab a bag and come along to dehusk that question.

To start, Whole Roasted Beans (or as we often abbreviate, WRB) are cocoa beans. Yes, these are what we use to make chocolate. So nope, they are not coffee beans. After we finish hand sorting all of our beans—picking out the cracked, flat, and broken ones that might not taste good—we roast them, and then we crack, winnow and grind them down with sugar into chocolate. Roasting is a very important step in our flavor development process for two reasons: One, it helps bring out the flavors that we love in our chocolate and two, it’s the ‘kill step’ that ultimately kills any possible pathogens and assures that our chocolate is safe to eat. For our WRB, we use Madagascan beans from Bertil Akesson’s Bejofo Estate, and roast them a bit longer than we do if we were making them into chocolate. Why? The answer is simple. When roasted lightly, our Madagascar beans have the bright flavors we think taste amazing as a chocolate bar (after they’ve been conched and sugar has been added) but we don’t necessarily love those flavors as much as a stand-alone experience. So, by increasing our roast time, we’ve been able to skim off some of the sharper acidic flavors, leaving us with a nutty, citrusy flavor profile that we think is more snackable. If you want to learn more about the roasting process for our beans, we have factory tours and classes available to answer any questions you may have.

So, how do I eat them?

Snacking 
One way people eat them is as a snack! You can squeeze one lightly and roll it between your fingers, just like cracking a peanut, to snap the skin and make it easier to peel off. You’ll end up with two parts; a peel, which we call husk, and the solids inside or the “meat of the bean,” which we call the nib. The nibs are what we refine down to make chocolate. This is the closest thing to eating 100% chocolate without the commitment. I often taste nutty notes in pure nibs, similar to a peanut or almond.

Topping
Using the nibs as a topping is always my favorite way to enjoy them. I like to have the crunchy texture and nibby flavor that it adds to things I already love. You can sprinkle the full nibs on top of yogurt, oatmeal, a salad or even ice cream! If you feel like getting creative, many people candy their nibs and use them as a delicious topping for desserts. Not only can you eat them as broken chunks of nib, but you can grind them up in a blender or food processor to make a nutty powder to boost your recipes. I suggest trying matcha soft serve, covered in ground nibs – yum!

Baking
Baking with chocolate is always fun, but with nibs, it’s even better! My favorite is making chocolate cherry bread using nibs instead of chocolate chips. Roasted cacao beans also make a great substitute for nuts. You can easily make banana nut bread by replacing nuts for nibs. We use nibs in many of our recipes here at Dandelion, stop by either of our cafes to try how our kitchen team incorporates them into our pastries and drinks.

Chocolate making
Although it’s possible, I wouldn’t recommend using these bean for home chocolate making. As I mentioned before, we developed a very specific roast profile that is intentionally different from the one we use for our bars, so we would hate for you to not get the result you wanted. If you’re interested in making chocolate at home we have a book coming out in November where we go more in depth, but if you can’t wait, sign up for our Chocolate 201 classes and let’s make a batch of chocolate!

Are there any other experiments I can do with them? 

Absolutely! The great thing about working at Dandelion Chocolate is all of the tasting and experiments we do here—from our chocolate makers developing new bar profiles to our pastry team regularly adding new things to the menu. Everyone works hard in learning and creating something they’re excited about, so I wanted to share a couple of things that I made at home using my roasted beans.

Cracking and winnowing (removing husks)
If you want a quick, but slightly messy way to remove the husk off the beans, this has worked since the beginning of our chocolate journey. This is the same technique our founder, Todd, used when he was starting in his kitchen at home.

  1. Put your desired amount of beans into a ziplock bag and make sure it’s closed all the way.
  2. Using a rolling pin to go over the bag and break all of the beans. What you will have in the bag is a bunch of broken husk and nibs, all mixed together.
  3. Place all of the broken nibs and husk into a bowl. I found that using a strainer helped me filter out some of the bigger pieces of husk before putting in the bowl.
  4. Then use a blow dryer to “winnow” the husk off the nibs. Since husk pieces are light, they should blow away and the nibs should remain in the bowl. This takes a little practice of angling the blow dryer just right to allow only the husk to fly over the edge of the bowl, while the heavier nibs remain inside. As a warning, make sure you do not do this in a place where pets could eat them. Theobromine is very, very dangerous for dogs!
  5. If you’re like me, and like things done at 110%, you can remove any remaining husk by hand. In our factory, we use the ten-minute rule: once you start picking nibs clean, cap yourself at ten minutes. Otherwise, you’ll be doing it for eternity.

I also tried seeing how long it would take me to remove the husk by hand, bean by bean, and got through half of the bag before my hands were covered in cocoa butter and smelled like chocolate. It’s not impossible, but requires more patience, a lot of podcasts, and may take longer than cracking and winnowing.

Cold Brew infused with nibs
After spending some time working at the Ferry Building one of my favorite things to do was to make our Ecuador Cold Brew. So I went home and made some for myself in a French press.

  1. Start off by grinding your coffee at a coarse grind.
  2. Optional: Use a spice grinder. I tried to match the same coarseness as the coffee.
  3. Pour the coffee into the French press first and then fill it about halfway full with boiling water.
  4. Next, add the nibs and stir everything together before topping it off with more water.
  5. Remember to put the lid on, but don’t plunge it.
  6. Leave it to brew at room temperature for 24 hours.
  7. Plunge the coffee, and do it slowly so none of the grounds make it to your coffee.
  8. Transfer to a jar and put it in the fridge to enjoy later.

Waffles with nibs

This was probably the most exciting thing I got to do. I bought a cast iron waffle maker and was finally able to put it to use. If you were wondering, this is where I used those nibs I winnowed by hand!

Here is a recipe I adapted from Flour Arrangements:


INGREDIENTS

  • 1¾ cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • ⅓ cup cocoa nibs
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1¾ cups buttermilk
  • 1 stick butter, melted
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • maple syrup, for serving


INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Combine all of the dry ingredients into a bowl.
  2. In another bowl, mix the eggs, buttermilk, melted butter and vanilla.
  3. Combine wet and dry ingredients.
  4. Brush each side of the waffle maker with sunflower oil, or another neutral oil.
  5. Pour 1/2 cup of batter into the pan for each waffle.
  6. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until golden and crispy at the edges.
  7. You can use maple syrup if you like, but I used strawberries as toppings since I wanted to really taste the nibs.

I love incorporating roasted beans into my overall diet, especially if I want to cut out sugar for a bit. The possibilities are endless, and if you ever see me at an event or class I would love to hear how you used your beans. Or comment your favorite ways below! Remember there’s no right or wrong way to taste chocolate, so I hoped this helped answer some of your questions. There are lots more experiments that I wanted to try, like smoothies and candied nibs, so keep an eye out for another post soon.

Blazin Husks

July 2, 2017 by

Richard is a chocolate maker at our Valencia St. factory, and as a former line cook, he’s been eagerly experimenting with ways to bring cacao husk into his culinary endeavors. Here, he gives us a primer on his most recent adventures: smoking meat and making charcoal with husk! A quick disclaimer: because cocoa beans come straight from farms, there is always the risk of pathogen contamination or heavy metals. Check out our blog post that dives into some of those risks here. The husk that Richard used was from Mantuano, Venezuela, and tested negative for heavy metals and aflotoxins. We very, very strongly encourage you (we’d require it if we were standing in your kitchen) that you know the source of your husk, and check in with your supplier to make sure that it has been tested for contamination. Ok, now that that’s over, let’s smoke!

I’ve always been fascinated with finding uses for things that people typically throw away. I guess this attitude came from growing up with family that spent a few years in a refugee camp, so I grew up with a strong emphasis on not wasting anything.  A lot of delicious things have been invented from what was previously considered “scraps”  including meatloaf, Vietnamese Pho, and most stews. In our factory, we’ve got no use for cocoa husk (the outer shell of the cocoa bean), other than donating it to local farms to use as mulch. I’ve done a few weird projects with chocolate at home—chocolate milk dumplings (like soup dumplings but with chocolate milk, peanut butter, and banana), and tangyuan, which is like a mochi in a ginger syrup but I made it with chocolate ganache in a cacao nib and ginger syrup. But smoking meat with cacao husks was especially enticing to me because I get to use something we normally throw away. That, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying wood chips. And by cheaper, I mean free (for me). 

So, on one of my days off, I drove up to the Valencia St. Factory and came home with a 7-kilogram bag of husk from a batch of beans from Mantuano, Venezuela that was winnowed that day. My mission: to find out if I can, in fact, smoke meat with cacao husk.

So, can you?

You bet! Turns out that it works. Though it doesn’t impart any special chocolatey notes to the meat, it definitely makes for a faint smokey flavor, almost like oak or maple. Now, I am very far from a barbecue master, so I am not familiar with the nuances of different types smoke and how they impart different flavors. I just know that it is possible to smoke with the husk and that the end result tastes pretty good. If anything, it is a convenient alternative to wood chips.

The technique I used to smoke with cacao husk was inspired by Chinese tea-smoking (think tea smoked duck). The typical method for tea-smoking involves wrapping your tea with rice and spices in foil. In this method, you bunch up all your smoking fuel so that it burns a little slower. The low oxygen environment keeps it from igniting and turning to ash. Here, I’ll outline the process that I used with my grill because I don’t have a smoker (yet). If you don’t you have a smoker like me, you can just use a little Weber grill ($30-$40 from Home Depot). If you have a smoker, I imagine you can replace your wood chips with packets of wet cacao husk.

How to smoke with cacao husk:

This is my method for smoking anything using cacao husk, and I recommend using it on brisket or white fish to start, or pork belly—which you’ll find a recipe for below. 

Smoking Packet:

Fill foil with a few handfuls of cacao husk and wrap it up.

Poke holes in the foil to allow room for smoke to escape.

Do this to make two larger to three smaller foil packets.

Set Up Your Grill:

Set a metal pan full of water under where the meat will go, this will simultaneously add moisture, catch drippings, and act as a heat sink to keep the temperature consistent as you are smoking your meat.

Light your coals using a charcoal chimney, or any other method you know. Add a bed of unlit coals opposite of where you will grill your meat. Add your lit coals on top of these. Cover and preheat your grill until it reaches roughly 250°F (you’ll want a thermometer here).

Directions:

Place smoking packet over coals, and place grill rack on. Place meat on grill above the water pan

Stick a lid on the grill with vents above the meat, half open. This creates airflow that will guide the smoke towards the meat you are cooking.

Replace coals every hour or so to maintain temperature and fuel for your grill. If the packet stops smoking replace it with a new one.

After about four hours, begin checking the temperature of your meat with an internal thermometer. Once the meat reaches 145°F, the meat is done. Now take the meat off and let rest.

So far, I’ve only done this the husk from Venezuelan beans, and I’m curious to see if different husks might impart different flavors.

RECIPE: Crispy Smoked Pork Belly with Cacao Husk

Ingredients:
1- 1.5 lbs of pork belly, skin on
2-3 foil packets of cacao husk (instructions above)
Kosher salt
a few tablespoons of Chinese five spice

Score the skin in cross hatches on the skin side of the pork belly to allow fat to drain out when cooking.
Rub a thin layer of salt and Chinese five spice all over the pork belly.

Heat up coals for the grill in a chimney starter, and prepare smoking packets. Place water pan in the grill, once coals are ready place them on one side next to water pan. Place smoke packet over coals and allow the charcoal grill to preheat until the thermometer reads roughly 225°F.

Place pork belly, skin-side up on the grill above the water pan, and layer more kosher salt on top of the skin. Cover grill let smoke for at least 4-6 hours until the salt has formed a crust and the internal temperature has reached 145°.

Take pork off the grill and remove the salt crust. Preheat oven to 475°F, and bake for another 30 minutes, or until skin is crackly and crispy (alternatively you can place the pork belly under the broiler for 5-10 minutes). That’s it! Enjoy your crispy smoked pork belly.

Bonus! Making Charcoal out of Cacao Husk

Husk Charcoal Flakes

One of the byproducts of smoking with cacao is that you get charcoal flakes at the end that you can use later to make charcoal briquettes.  

For those who don’t know, charcoal is made by heating high carbon material (typically wood, discarded coconut shells, and other plant materials) in a low oxygen environment so that “impurities,” or anything that isn’t carbon, burn out, and the carbon itself (the charcoal) doesn’t combust and turns to ash.  

Normally when people make charcoal, they are looking to make lump charcoal, from whole chunks of wood, especially in more rural areas. I first ran into homemade charcoal when I was staying in Kenya, where the folks I was staying with would essentially light a pile of wood on the fire, then cover it with dirt, so the wood didn’t burn into ash.

Inevitably, you will also end up with little bits of charcoal that break off that are too small to use on their own. Charcoal briquettes are made by grinding up all these extra bits and pieces into a powder and mixing them with a binder (I used cornstarch because that was what I had on-hand), then shaping them into briquettes. They’re basically the hotdogs of the charcoal world.

Cocoa charcoal!

If you try this, please let me know how it went in the comments below!

Education Station: Ca-what?

June 29, 2017 by

You’re curious, so we find answers. Our education team fields lots of questions from our guests during classes, so we’ve decided to launch a brand new series of monthly installments in which we tackle some of those questions and share the answers with the world. We call it The Education Station. This week, Kelsey dives into clarifying some commonly mis-used words – namely what plant chocolate does and does not come from. 

Sometimes, when we’re deep in conversation with a class attendee or a guest in our cafe, some very similar sounding — but very different meaning — words come up. And those words, if misused, can create a bit of confusion. So let’s discuss coca, coco, cocoa, and cacao, and how, if any of them are related to chocolate.

First, let’s talk about what they have in common: These are all plants. They grow in the tropics. Aaand that’s about it. Below, we’ll dig into each of them, but a quick disclaimer before we get started: the definitions here are our own, unless noted otherwise, and refer primarily to terminology used in the United States. You may find slightly different definitions elsewhere, and we’ll do our best to explain how we arrived at the words we use.

So what is coca?

Coca [koh-kuh]:  any of several South American shrubs (genus Erythroxylon, family Erythroxylaceae); especially :  one (E. coca) that is the primary source of cocaine. (Merriam Webster)

Leaves of the South American shrub, of the Erythroxylon genus

The plant itself is native to the Andean region of South America and grows relatively easily in mid to high altitudes. When consumed, the primary alkaloid in the plant, cocaine, acts as a stimulant by constricting blood vessels. Coca only becomes dangerous when the cocaine alkaloid is extracted, concentrated, processed and synthesized. Although coca may receive a bad rap due to its modern day uses and cultivation (think Narcos, the TV show), the traditional and practical uses are much more innocent than many think. Often consumed by chewing the leaves, or as a tea, coca has been, and is still, used to relieve pain, altitude sickness and even suppress hunger.

Dried coca leaves, steeped in hot water used as tea

The coca leaf has actually been used for thousands of years, with some of the oldest evidence pointing to nomadic tribes scattered throughout the Andes in Northern Peru, around 1800 B.C. These tribes migrated with the changing of seasons, avoiding the harsh conditions of the mountains in search of food and shelter. This required walking up and down the high altitudes of the Andes for long, extended periods of time, where food was often scarce along the way. Naturally, the healing properties of the coca plant allowed many tribes to move frequently and was used as a sacred medicine. 

Coca is also known as one of the first domesticated plants in recorded history. Once early explorers of the region began growing the crop for medicinal purposes, the cultivation expanded and evolved as more was understood about the plant. By concentrating of the cocaine alkaloid in order to produce a high demand drug, coca turned into the high-risk cash crop it is now commonly known for.

It is not related to chocolate, in anyway whatsoever. Bummer, I know.

What is coco?

Coco [koh-koh]: the coconut palm; the drupaceous fruit of the coconut palm whose outer fibrous husk yields coir and whose nut contains thick edible meat and, in the fresh fruit, a clear liquid (see coconut water) (Merriam Webster)

Dandelion Bean Sourcerer, Greg, drinking a coconut

Coconuts! From the now popular coconut water, touted as a magic cure for one too many adult beverages, to clothing made from the fibrous husk — the coconut has become an important global commodity with rising popularity and variety of uses. As Science Daily put it, “The coconut […] is the Swiss Army knife of the plant kingdom; in one neat package it provides a high-calorie food, potable water, fiber that can be spun into rope, and a hard shell that can be turned into charcoal. What’s more, until it is needed for some other purpose it serves as a handy flotation device.”

Fibrous coconuts, showing dark spots resembling faces

 

Often called the Tree of Life, the coconut palm (coco nucifera) has been supporting the local economies of many tropical countries for centuries. The first recorded discoveries of the coconuts were arguably by 15th century Portuguese explorers in Southeast Asia. They described the coconut shell as “coco” meaning “head or face,” for the characteristic the dark holes that resembled two eyes and a mouth.

Coconuts are also unrelated to chocolate, but you probably already guessed that.

What is cacao?

Cacao [kuh-kah-oh]: the fatty seeds of a South American evergreen tree (Theobroma cacao of the family Sterculiaceae) that are used in making chocolate.

Theobroma Cacao tree, bearing pods

It’s more than just a funny word from a Portlandia skit. Cacao is the seed of a tree, and it grows inside of a pod filled with pulpy fruit. To make chocolate, these seeds are traditionally harvested, fermented, dried, roasted, cracked and winnowed, then ground down with sugar. But at some point in this process, the cacao becomes cocoa. Chocolate has been made from cacao for a very long time, and it has a long and deep global history, much of which is widely still unknown. Most of what we do know about chocolate only happened in the last one to two hundred years, but we know it’s existed for thousands! (If you’d like to learn more about the history of chocolate, we’d love to host you in our Edible History of Chocolate classes). 

 

So, if cacao is a seed that becomes chocolate, then what is cocoa, and what is a cocoa bean? 

A harvested cacao pod, displaying the pulpy fruit surrounding cacao seeds

 

Good question. Even in dictionaries, cacao and cocoa are often used interchangeably. Because of that lack of clarity, the craft chocolate community has been trying to come to an agreement about how we all define things, including the difference between cacao and cocoa. One simple distinction that we like to make is that cacao refers to the unprocessed state, while cocoa is the processed state. But here is where it gets a little more complicated.

 

 

When does ‘processing’ begin? The minute human hands are involved, say at harvest? Or, is it when the chemical state of the seed has shifted, say during fermentation?

We like this summarized definition that was shared with us by the folks at the Cocoa Research Center at the University of the West Indies.

“The cacao becomes cocoa when the cotyledon dies. The cotyledon is the part of the seed that would become the first leaves of the plant. The death of the cotyledon changes the future of the seed; it ceases to be a plant and will become something tasty to eat instead. This simple distinction helps us identify when the destiny of the cacao changes from becoming a living thing to becoming a product.”

So, put simply?

Cocoa [koh-koh]:  the seeds of the Theobroma cacao tree, once the fermentation process has killed the cotyledon.

But, wait, what about cocoa powder? Isn’t that “cocoa”?

Cocoa powder; what remains of cocoa nibs after the cocoa butter is pressed out

Well yes. Kind of. Out in the world, sometimes the word cocoa, or ‘hot cocoa’, is used in reference to cocoa powder. Cocoa powder is made by pressing most of the fat (or cocoa butter, rather) out of winnowed cocoa beans, and then grinding up the solid mass that’s left after the pressing.

So technically, if you’re using our definition of things, cocoa powder is cocoa because the cotyledon is definitely dead, but the word cocoa could refer to a lot of things, not necessarily only cocoa powder. It’s one of those ‘a-square-is-a-rectangle-but-a-rectangle-isn’t-a square’ kind of definition.   

Clear as mud, right? If anything, I hope you’ve taken away a few lessons from this little rundown. Namely, chocolate is not a narcotic or a coconut.

 

In summary:

COCA:  Coca leaves were once a spiritual and medicinal plant that, over time and with heavy processing, turned into a controlled substance. Coca has nothing to do with chocolate.

COCO: Although many chocolate makers may use various parts of the coconut palm in their chocolate for additional flavor, chocolate itself does not come from coco(nut).

CACAO: The seed which grows off the Theobroma Cacao tree and is the main ingredient for chocolate.

COCOA: A debated term. Often alone, cocoa refers to a comforting hot chocolatey drink (at least in the United States). Within the chocolate industry, many use cocoa or cocoa bean to differentiate a cacao seed once it has been processed.

 

References:

Coca:

http://www.cocamuseum.com/history-of-the-coca-plant/

https://www.tni.org/en/primer/coca-leaf-myths-and-reality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca#Traditional_uses

Coco:

http://www.coconutrepublic.org/coconut_story.php

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110624142037.htm

Cocoa:

https://sta.uwi.edu/cru/

Getting a little Husky

June 21, 2017 by

We recently changed our menu to include an item which is made by infusing it with cacao husk. This led to a few questions, concerns, and some confusion, so it seemed like a good opportunity to talk husk in more detail, discuss our understanding of husk, and encourage a bit of caution toward the potential risk of using husk for food products.

Anatomy of a cocoa bean

 

Let’s start at the beginning. Cocoa beans have an outer coating, sometimes known as shell, husk, or seed coat, that, while composed of a few things, is primarily fiber. It’s actually pretty neat, it serves to protect the bean, or seed, until it germinates. When I say that the husk “protects” the seed, this includes absorbing many heavy metals that might be present in the environment and blocking fungi and other microorganisms from penetrating and destroying the bean.

 

 

At the point of germination, a taproot pops through the husk, the bean pushes up out of the ground (buoyed by the taproot) and forms a cotyledon which nourishes the plant until it has formed enough leaf area to live and grow using photosynthesis.  Sounds useful, right?  If the husk isn’t cracked on a bean when it gets to you, you can feel relatively confident that the bean inside isn’t moldy as no spores can get in to grow mold. Yay! Three cheers for the husk!

So, what’s the catch? Why don’t people use husk for all sorts of things? As you might imagine, heavy metal and microbiological contamination, which the husk prevent from reaching the nib, don’t just disappear, they stick with (and to) the husk. Sadly, it gets worse, when cocoa beans ferment and dry, fungi will sometimes grow on the husk and these fungi can produce mycotoxins (specifically alflatoxins and ochratoxins). You might guess from the name that mycotoxins are toxic to human beings and additionally, unlike most microorganisms, aren’t destroyed by heat. Lastly, if the beans aren’t dried and stored in a relatively secure area, chickens can run through them and flies can land on them which can contaminate beans with listeria, salmonella or E. Coli (among other things).  So, as a chocolate maker, one of the first things we do is remove the husk from our cocoa beans. This is partly because of possible contamination and partly because it doesn’t refine well (after all, it’s mostly fiber!). Hence the winnowing step in our production process, it separates the husk from the nibs, giving us clean nibs to make into chocolate and leaving husk as byproduct.  Boo! Three jeers for the husk!

So, why add a panna cotta that has been infused with husk to our chef’s tasting menu? It is partly that the flavor from a husk infusion is different than a nib infusion, and we really liked the flavor.  Also, our production process generates a fair amount of husk as a byproduct and we are always interested in doing better things with waste products than wasting them. While we typically give our husk to Bi-rite market’s farms to use as mulch, finding other uses is, well, useful.

The controversial question is how do we know that we aren’t also putting all sorts of awful things into the panna cotta when we are giving it that husky flavor?  Honestly, there is no way to be completely certain. When it comes to manufacturing with agricultural ingredients, it’s very difficult to know anything definitive about the state of their contamination as the contamination is typically in spots rather than completely saturating the product. This means that you need to understand the risk potential contamination presents and find ways to mitigate it although it is almost impossible to remove it completely. While we source our beans very carefully, we know that there is the possibility of contamination in our supply chain, so we test representative samples of beans and husk as we get them (meaning we pull small sample from a variety of areas). In this case, when we considered using husk to infuse flavor into cream, we tested for the most common contaminants to evaluate the risk and ensure that the husk panna cotta on our menu would be both safe and delicious. In comes Anresco labs, a local and experienced food lab that can test for almost everything.

I’ve included the 3 sets of test results that we did on a representative sample of the husk we use for the panna cotta:

If you are looking to use husk, it’s worth understanding what to test for and why. The tests above illustrate our current approach and show the results on the husk that we use to give our panna cotta its flavor. Aflatoxin (B1, B2, G1, G2) are mycotoxins and the results were negative, as were the results for microbiological contamination.  SPC (or Standard Plate Count) looks high but doesn’t imply any actual health risks. A high SPC is simply indicative of microbiological activity, which is very common when it comes to cocoa beans—after all, the first step in cocoa processing is fermentation!  SPC is also a valuable indicator for understanding sanitary conditions of the environment in which the beans were produced. The only positive test results on the husk were for heavy metals.  We analyzed these results based on the worst case scenario of everything present in the husk transferring directly and completely to the panna cotta. Since we aren’t feeding actual husk to anyone, this is almost certainly not going to happen; however, we wanted to ensure that even if all of the heavy metals were transferred, the panna cotta would be safe to consume. Below is a chart of the potential heavy metal content per serving of panna cotta. We arrived at these numbers by accounting for how much husk is used in the recipe and how many servings the recipe yields (we used 200g of husk in the recipe and it produces 40 servings). We also checked how the results line up with Prop 65, a California law which outlines daily limits for consumption of heavy metals and is the strictest regulation that limits heavy metal exposure that we know of).  Again, this analysis was done as if we didn’t strain out the husk and/or if the metals completely infused into the panna cotta, which they almost certainly didn’t, have I clarified that too much?

Husk Panna Cotta

    • 200 g of cacao husk / batch
    • 40 panna cotta / batch
    • 5 g of cacao husk / panna cotta (it’s infused and removed however; but in worst case scenario assume it was eaten)
    Heavy Metal Test Result Potential Panna Cotta Content (PPCC) Prop 65 Daily Limit % of Daily Limit (According to Prop 65)
    Antimony <0.05 ppm
    Arsenic 0.08 ppm 0.4 μg / serving 10 μg 4%
    Bismut <0.05 ppm
    Cadmium 0.3 ppm 1.5 μg / serving 4.1 μg 37%
    Chromium 1 ppm 5 μg / serving 8.2 μg 61%
    Lead 0.3 ppm 1.5 μg / serving 15 μg 10%
    Mercury <0.05 ppm
    Molybdenum 0.2 ppm
    Silver <0.05 ppm
    Tin <2 ppm

As you can see, considering the strictest guidelines, the panna cotta infused with husk should be safe to consume. Even so, this is a specific situation where we are using husk once we have done the due diligence to understand the risk associated with this specific origin and this specific harvest.

Hopefully this explanation was helpful.  Overall we don’t encourage people to blindly use or eat husk. It could be dangerous (think of it akin to eating raw chicken). That being said, the risk associated with using husk is quantifiable and assessable. If you are thinking of using husk, it’s important to do the homework, get some testing done, and send us your results so we have more data to analyze!

EDUCATION STATION: Ground Chocolate

March 25, 2017 by

You’re curious, so we find answers. Our education team fields many questions from our guests in classes, so we’ve decided to launch a brand new series in which we tackle some of the questions we get most often. We call it The Education Station, and it’s where you’ll find the answers to just about everything from what cocoa beans are made of to why cocoa powder and ground chocolate are not the same. Speaking of…

What IS this?? Keep reading to find out.

It’s A Grind!

Sometimes people ask us how we make our hot chocolate so, well, chocolatey. Do we pour chocolate from our melangers (the machine that grinds, conches, and mixes cocoa beans and sugar to turn them into chocolate) straight into their cups?  

Sadly, if we poured chocolate from a melanger into your cup it would solidify pretty quickly and be too thick to drink. So how then, do you make a thick, rich hot chocolate?

The answer is that we make a rich base with ground chocolate. But what, might you ask, is ground chocolate? Is it like cocoa powder? Most hot chocolate recipes are based on cocoa powder, which is in its own way a kind of ground chocolate so that would be a good guess, but they are very, very different.

Since this often seems to be a confusing subject, I’ve taken the opportunity to demonstrate some of the differences between the two.

 

What is cocoa powder?

Many people assume that cocoa powder is simply ground up cocoa nibs. It’s a good guess, but the thing is, cocoa nibs liquify when you grind them. Cocoa nibs are made up of approximately 50% fat, or cocoa butter, and when the heat from the friction inherent in grinding the cocoa nibs meets that cocoa butter in the nibs, it melts. Thus, when you grind up cocoa nibs you end up with more of a crunchy peanut butter-like paste rather than a powder. (Don’t trust me, try it! Throw some nibs in a blender, food processor, or between a mortar and pestle.)

So if not ground nibs, then what is cocoa powder? I’ll give you a clue: cocoa powder comes from a part of the cocoa nib. Cocoa nibs are composed of two things (if we’re being relatively simplistic): cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Now, it’s worth saying here that there are no definition of “cocoa solid” that is universally agreed upon. Technically, there are non-fat cocoa solids (the brown, flavorful stuff in a cocoa nib) and fatty cocoa solids (usually called cocoa butter). For simplicity, we call the brown flavorful component the “cocoa solids,” and the fat “cocoa butter.” So, we’ll roll with that for now. 

Back to our programming: cocoa powder comes from the solids. But how do you separate the two? Well, it takes some heat and a lot of pressure to press most of the cocoa butter out of the cocoa nibs. To make cocoa powder, the remaining solid parts of the nibs are ground up. Since most of the cocoa butter was pressed out, cocoa solids won’t liquify when you grind them up, instead becoming a dry powder. In the video below, I’m pressing the cocoa butter out of our nibs using a seed oil extractor, and the butter that comes out is still brown because it’s not a perfect pressing. But, you get the idea.

An interesting note: Sometimes cocoa powder is chemically treated with an alkali solution to make it taste less acidic and more “chocolate-y.” These will be labeled “Dutch-processed” or “alkalized.” For more on Dutch-processed versus natural cocoa powder check out David Lebovitz’s informative blog on the subject.  

 

So, what is ground chocolate?  

In short, ground chocolate is just what it sounds like: chocolate ground into a powder. Most of the ground chocolate we make at Dandelion is made out of 70% dark chocolate (ingredients: 70% cocoa nibs and 30% sugar, by weight). So to recap, cocoa powder is basically cocoa solids (with a tiny bit of fat that couldn’t be pressed out), and ground chocolate is three things: sugar, and cocoa solids and cocoa butter (the two components of nibs). 

We recently got a few new machines to help us make ground chocolate from untempered blocks of chocolate. You have to be careful not to heat the blocks too much or grind them for too long because, of course, chocolate melts. To grind the blocks, we used to use an industrial food processor, but we’ve recently upgraded to a fancy shmancy granulator that is much quieter, faster, and more consistent. 

Those were cool photos, but I’m still a little confused about how cocoa powder and ground chocolate are different….

Okay – well let’s look at them in the real world. To make hot chocolate we need some heat, right?

What happens if we gently heat cocoa powder and ground chocolate on a double boiler?

Ground chocolate melts over heat

Cocoa powder….does not.

Cocoa powder has between 11% and 22% fat (because it’s nearly impossible to press all the cocoa butter out) and ground chocolate has more like 35% fat, so they behave differently when heated. Heat cocoa powder, and virtually nothing will happen. It balls up a little, but can easily be whisked back to its starting texture. On the other hand, the ground chocolate, a fattier substance with some sugar in it, will melt fast. To return it to its starting state, we’d have to cool it and toss it in a food processor. 

 

Okay, but we still haven’t made hot chocolate…

Another way of illustrating the difference between these too is by looking at what happens when we make hot chocolate with them by adding warmed milk to each. Behold:

When 3 oz of steamed almond milk were added to 2 tablespoons cocoa powder or 2 tablespoons ground chocolate, the cocoa powder rose to the top of the container. Meanwhile, the ground chocolate started to melt.

When stirred, the milk and powders mixed into each other in a similar manner, but the hot chocolate made from ground chocolate was slightly thicker. The hot chocolate made from pure cocoa powder was more bitter since it had no added sugar and a strong chocolate flavor, but it was less creamy and rich and noticeably thinner. The hot chocolate made from the ground chocolate was thicker and clung to the whisk a little more.

Here at the factory, without a 50-tonne hydraulic cocoa butter press, we don’t have or make cocoa powder, and so we’re only left with what we do make: chocolate. This is a fundamental difference between our pastry kitchen and most pastry kitchens, where cocoa powder is a baking staple. Our Executive Pastry Chef, Lisa Vega, and her team are constantly improvising ways to work with chocolate instead of cocoa powder to make cakes, cookies, custards, and more. Single origin ground chocolate brings a few more challenges to the table—the fat level varies from origin to origin—and you can’t just swap ground chocolate in for cocoa powder because, as you’ve seen, they are quite different.

But lucky for me, I get to savor the rich chocolatey hot chocolate from our pastry team every day. Later this year, you’ll get a full look inside our kitchen and all of its secrets as part of the book we’ve been writing for the last two years, coming out in late fall. But for now, we’ll include a recipe for our hot chocolate below. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go order myself another cup. And stay tuned for our next installment of Education Station, where we’ll explore some more chocolate mysteries. Next stop: Is White Chocolate, Chocolate?

“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground [chocolate].” – Theodore Roosevelt

Our house hot chocolate is one of the simplest, most delicious ways to enjoy chocolate as a drink. We recommend it with marshmallows or nibby whipped cream, both of which you’ll find in our book—a guide to making chocolate at home, sourcing beans, and making pastries with single origin chocolate—coming out later this year!

Our House Hot Chocolate

2½ cups / 567 grams / 20 ounces nonfat milk

1 tablespoon packed / 10 grams light brown sugar

1½ cups / 227 grams / 8 ounces 70% chocolate, chopped

 

  1. Combine 1 cup (225 grams / 8 ounces) of milk and the brown sugar in a large heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water.
  1. Add the chocolate to the hot milk and whisk to combine, keeping the bowl over the pot to continue . Whisk the mixture for an additional 3 minutes, until shiny and emulsified. This mix——may seem quite thick at this point.
  1. Whisk in the rest of the milk, adding it in a slow stream, and heat for another 4 to 5 minutes, whisking occasionally, until hot.
  1. Remove the bowl from the pot of water, pour the hot chocolate into mugs, and serve immediately.