Transparent Chocolate

All this talk about cocoa solids has set me thinking... for those of you who know me, you may know that I work on a five rev system, if I can't solve all the major problems with an idea in five revs, I move on to the next idea.

Chocolate is essentially cocoa particles and sugar crystals suspended within a cocoa butter lattice. (If you ever get bored, try suspending cocoa and cocoa butter particles within a sugar lattice, it is still chocolate by every definition, but completely different.)

1. What if... what if... we could, suspend cocoa and sugar particles within an amorphous cocoa butter structure? Interesting start... but still brown.

The problem is, cocoa powder isn't clear. Yeah this looks a little different, more depth, but not even approaching clear. The solution is to either make the cocoa powder clear, or remove it. Since I have no clue how to make cocoa powder clear...

2. What if we could use a trick or two to transfer the flavor of the cocoa to a solvent and then remove the pigment? We could then cook the sugar in this solvent to transfer the flavor and now we've got chocolate flavored sugar suspended in an amorphous cocoa butter structure. Damn, still not clear, now more of a quartz look and the flavor has become flat.

Ok, multiple solvents are required to capture the depth of flavor in the cocoa powder (such a waste of Los Ancones, but I can't be bothered to keep track of multiple products). Also, the sugar is still in crystal form, and diffuse too much light.

I, unfortunately have to do a little more research at this point... I believe that isomalt would be a good replacement for sugar due to its non bitter, albeit reduced, sweetness and its superior optical properties when compared the sucrose.

I think that a lipid solvent would be a good idea as well, but I am unsure if I am better to extract the cocoa flavors in parallel or sequentially... and if sequentially... well yeah gots to read more. So rev three should be done in a few days hopefully.

I'd love any thoughts until then.

cheers,

Rob

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Robert Shea on April 17, 2009 at 7:40pm

Some interesting developments that I should have seen coming, but just plain didn't think about:

Amorphous cocoa butter is warming unlike tranditional cocoa butter which is, of course cooling. This is good because it allows the use of cooling sugar alcohols like erythitol, which lacks the harsh digestive properties common to sugar alcohols commonly found in sugar-free chocolates. However these warming properties make for a very different eating experience when combined with a more neutral sugar.

Permalink Reply by Arun Bhargava on June 28, 2009 at 3:09pm

Hello,
this is quite interesting topic. Regret, i can not contribute, albeit, would love to read more, as you super guys come out with some research.

Permalink Reply by Robert Shea on October 10, 2009 at 2:49am

This project got shelved as I ran into some issues with expense of rapid cooling and then I moved, and moved, and followed some other ideas... hopefully after the holidays when I'm awash in slightly more money than rent, I'll resume my work. ;)

Permalink Reply by Arun Bhargava on October 10, 2009 at 3:14am

Seems, I am the only one reading this post, which I think was quite interesting.

Robert, all the best to whatever you plan to do.

It would be nice to see you back on this research.

Arun.

Permalink Reply by Ilana on October 10, 2009 at 12:19pm