alternative to mycryo

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Permalink Reply by cheebs on June 13, 2011 at 12:25pm

Absolutely!  Just temper your cocoa butter as if it were chocolate and mold into blocks or whatever you want.  Grate with a Microplane.  Voila!  Mycryo substitute for much less!

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Permalink Reply by Clay Gordon on June 13, 2011 at 12:56pm

Cheebs -

Don't you think tempered cocoa butter will work a little differently? My understanding is that the crystals in Mycryo are pretty much all Form VI which accounts for their "aggressiveness" in setting up.

I don't have much experience using Mycryo in pastry, just in savory.

:: Clay

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Permalink Reply by cheebs on June 13, 2011 at 1:15pm

Clay, I use normal tempered CB regularly and have noticed no discernible difference.  Caveat:  I have only used it for tempering, not as a thickener for desserts. 

However, from what I remember of the Valrhona class, it really didn't matter as it was used for its solidification properties rather that its tempering properties, and it could be melted to just about any temperature.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Foley on June 15, 2011 at 6:45pm

Most of the mycryo benefit is that it is in powder form. Cacao butter is hard to find in small morsels so lots of chefs use mycryo....tres expensive but convenient. We sell Bo at Qzina. We also offer about the smallest morsel size of cocoa butter I have seen. The c butter chips run about e size of 6000 ct Choc chips, so quite small. We sell a lot as alternate to mycryo or for tempering and spraying. Athough as a gelatin replacement, not sure. Have you tried agar, or vegetable gelatin, those work well also.

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Permalink Reply by antonino allegra on June 19, 2011 at 3:26am

Hi, 

i have used Mycryo to set a raspberry mousse with no gelatin, it works very well if you keep the temperature under-control otherwise it will split (almost like when you make pound cake and the eggs are too cold).

So start with a rather warmer base (depend on your recipe..) and then add your Mycryo in.

I have tried to replace Mycryo with just "Microplaned" cocoa butter and it works fine in pastry application.

If you would like to have a very fine powder, a simple trick: Temper CB, put in a spray gun and spray into a tray, scrape, put in a container and there you should have a fine powdered cocoa butter... 

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