For the Love of Chocolate

Oh chocolate! Why do you taste so good? When your aroma fills the air I am instantly happy, when you melt in my mouth i'm captivated with sheer bliss...

I'm Timothy Seiko, owner of Timothy Daniel, the organic, high quality, silky smooth chocolate and coffee start-up hobby business.

Yes, you can call it my passion. So much so that I decided I had to make it from scratch, to bury myself in the world of flavours and aromas that take me to my happy place.

So in this first post of mine, I would like to start off with a quick "how-to" guide to making chocolate at home. It's easier than you think and i'll follow up with more in-depth instructional topics such as how to temper chocolate. For now, I have posted a video at the bottom of this that outlines all the steps in making this delicious treat!

In the first part of the video, I am roasting cacao beans. Cacao beans come from the theobroma cacao tree native to central and south america. The beans are found inside a large pod that grows on the tree, when ripe they are picked, cracked open and the white beans are allowed to air dry/ferment for about 2 weeks until they take on their dark brown distinctive colour. Roasting accomplishes two main things, first it kills bacteria found on the shell of the bean so that it is safe for handling/consumption. Second, it brings out the full potential aromas and flavours. The idea here is to roast lightly, not too hot and not very long. When you begin to hear the beans popping and crackling it's about time to stop roasting, your kitchen should be filled with the wonderful aroma at this point.

Second step in the video is when I "winnow" the beans. This means taking the paper thin shell off the beans to prep for grinding. The shell is discarded. I originally did this by hand, but it is tedious. The best at home method is to crush all the beans together with skin on, then put in a large bowl, take a hair dryer or heat gun and simply blow the skin/shell away. It works surprisingly well, but is messy!

Third, the de-chaffed beans can now be grinded into a liquor. The champion juicer is what I used and as you can see it does a great job liquifying those beans, again the aroma fills the air in such a pleasant way! With this chocolate liquor you can now place it in a chocolate melanger, it is difficult to make silky smooth chocolate without a melanger and small ones can be bought for a fair price.

Fourth, we need to add cocoa butter to the chocolate liquor. Cocoa butter is the fat that is extracted from cacao beans by a very heavy press. Adding the cocoa butter adds richness to the chocolate and makes the tempering process much easier. My mixture is 70% dark chocolate, therefore by weight, I added 20% cocoa butter. The butter needs to be melted, it is very important that your ingredients are never heated above 130F. You can melt the butter with a chocolate tempering machine, a heat gun on low or a double broiler. Important fact - water will ruin your chocolate and cause it to seize up. Whatever you do, keep all water away from your chocolate.

Fifth, sugar... yes we need sugar and there are many types of sugar you can use. I chose to use an organic cane sugar, it simply works so well with the mixture. By weight, i added 29.9% cane sugar directly to the melanger slowly.

Sixth, vanilla. Again you cannot put water in chocolate, so you must use vanilla pods. Vanilla extract won't work. Cut the pods (I used 6 pods) lengthwise then scrape the inner seeds out and toss it into the melanger as well. I also added a little bit of sodium bicarbonate not shown in the video, about a teaspoon. I do this to boost the pH towards neutral and to improve flavour. This is my trick that I have learned and the reviews speak for themselves.

Seventh, tempering... ahhh the daunting tempering process! I will put out a detailed post on tempering later, it's very easy and not to be feared. If you have the money, you can just buy a tempering machine, although I now prefer to do it by hand as it is quicker and more efficient. The point to tempering is to create a stable chocolate that can be put into molds, gives it a shiny gloss like appearance, the chocolate will have a nice snap to it, it will melt like butter in your mouth but will remain firm at room temp. A very important step is well tempered chocolate.

Once you have poured your chocolate mixture into its mold, you need to cool it down quickly for 5-10 minutes. I just placed the tray inside a freezer. When you pull the tray out, a good indication the temper is done properly is when the chocolate bar has contracted within the mold and falls out easily.

You can now wrap the bar however you like, or just eat it! It will remain fresh for months, it makes for a perfect gift or a healthy dessert alternative. Enjoy!