/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>12392440
I made a small batch, these numbers are good for 4 plump chocolates
start off with 50g of cheap dark chocolate, I believe that using high quality chocolate defeats the point, which is pimping cheap stuff to spend little money and still get to eat decent tasting chocolate
tonight I used 85%-cocoa Aldi brand chocolate, for €9,90/kg it was surprisingly good really
anyway, use a chocolate that's 10-15% darker than you'd normally eat, 50% and 85% tablets cost the same so we're going to make the extra cocoa count here

>>12392465
I'd also like to shout out to the chocolate brands discussion/shitposting thread that's up right now, thanks for giving me a decent alternative to studying for my exam on friday, I got passable at making and handling caramel because of you

anyway, add a pinch of salt

I'm watching with interest, anon, I've been wanting to make home-made chocolates for a while.

I'm also watching. This thread is cute so far.

>>12392440
Cool, this bump is on me.

>>12392504
then add 3-4g of butter
you may skip this + the next step if the chocolate you're using isn't any darker than what you'd usually eat on its own, but this yields more chocolates and makes everything a bit smoother and softer, so I recommend it even if you're not dirt poor like me
meanwhile, find another pan where you'll make caramel, a thick bottomed one is ideal as it makes it more difficult to burn 15% of the sugar before the rest is anything more than warm

>>12392557
then add ~10ml of milk
on second thought you'll most definitely want to avoid this step if you want to give your chocolates an aura of respectability, as I couldn't manage to eat any of the ones I made without getting my fingers at least a tiny bit dirty with chocolate
granted, I was quite interested and maybe I just didn't wait enough for them to cool down, but I still have two cooling, I'll eat one in a moment and let you know
in any case, the milk makes the chocolate a bit lighter and softer, so try making a small batch with it, see how you like it and decide accordingly

>>12392536
>>12392547
hey thanks
>>12392587
I was wrong, after letting the chocolates cool for another 40min they became firm enough on the outside that I could hold them without the chocolate melting any more than in any commercial chocolate, so by all means add the milk

so, now you got to make caramel for real
I didn't take any picture because I used small amount of sugar and I needed to tend to it
pic related is from "The Professional Chef", the big textbook from the Centr- Culinary Institute of America

>>12392648
this is the following page with the wet method
I achieved a good result using the dry method (basically heat the pan, add some sugar and two-three lemon juice drops or inverted sugar (such as simple syrup, check wikipedia), keep the heat on medium-low and keep adding sugar while you stir) but what I had in mind originally was different, I'll get to it after I explained how mine actually came out

so then, heat the chocolate+stuff pan in a bain-marie (or on a burner on low heat being veeeery careful not to burn the chocolate), add 15g of sugar and three lemon juice drops to another hot pan, and as soon as all the sugar is melted (you can expect most of it will be caramelized at that point) pour it in the chocolate pan while stirring
couple key points here:
1. the chocolate pan should be brought to the point where everything's melted quickly enough (like maybe put the small pan in already hot water for the bain-marie) and remain melted for as little time as possible - if you leave it like that for too much time it will get too hot, some water will evaporate, possibly some proteins will denaturate I don't fucking know chemistry was my worse subject in HS, and you'll be left with a liquid that doesn't solidify at room temperature and has an unpleasant, powdery texture
2. as sugar melts around 160°C, caramelizes around 170°C, and dark chocolate melts around 30°C, the caramel will harden as soon as you pour it in the chocolate pan, so it's vital that you stir vigorously and don't let the caramel harden in a ball shape - rather, it should be more like a duvet in the wind, with bubbles in it if possible
bonus. I used about 15g of sugar because I knew a fair bit of that would remain stuck in the caramel pan; that taken into account, the caramel ending up in the chocolate pot is more like 8-10g, so if you're making big batches where these losses are negligible the numbers should be more like 1 to 5 caramel to chocolate by weight

>>12392751
remove the pan from the heat, and after the caramel has hardened (a matter of seconds really, 15s since being poured and it should be fckn hard) smack it around a bit with the spoon/fork you used to stir the mixture
don't use a whisk, you'll hardly be able to break the caramel with it
if you stirred nicely enough the caramel should be long, thin, brittle, and easy to break into very small pieces
if you have a pestle, by all means go crazy

what I hoped would happen was that the caramel would remain softer, and that I'd be able to mix it with the chocolate without the former hardening, to get a more uniform chocolate-caramel mixture
please anybody, correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't seem to be possible using the aforementioned "dry method" - I cure as hell couldn't avoid the caramel hardening after getting colder
going back on it though it looks like something like what I had in mind may be possible cooking the sugar using the wet method to get to a thread or soft ball and then mixing that with the chocolate
the thread will probably harden as well after cooling a bit, but it might be easier to shape to a duvet-in-the-wind thing and then crack it in a lot of tiny pieces, at the expense of a more convincing and nutty caramel flavor
again, definitely try both and see what works best for you

after all this is said and done, the die is cast and the caramel is in tiny pieces floating in your hot chocolate, pour it in chocolate shapes (I used small metal shot glasses but really anything goes here) and put the shapes in ice cold water
as little time as possible should pass between pouring the caramel in the chocolate pan and pic related as the more time passes the higher the risk of burning the chocolate with the heat coming from the caramel

>>12392839
>duvet-in-the-wind caramel
Nice image, keep it up OP.

>>12392839
*I sure as hell couldn't

anyway, leave the shapes there in the water for at least 30min, and up to however you desire

>>12392860
remove the chocolates from the shapes and there you go, works of contemporary art
I'll level the top next time

I managed to go to bad without getting drunk so the work was worth it, the chocolates also taste good, use them to impress your family and friends if you have any
they also ended up pretty damn cheap, less than €12/kg worth of ingredients, so use them to impress your dirt poor college friends as well if you have any

good night, until next time

>>12393004
Nice OP, these look good.

>>12393132
preciate it
>>12393004
another thing I had forgotten, making a handful of batches I found a good method to clean the caramel pan quick even after the caramel has hardened:
boil water, pour it in the pan over the hard caramel, add some dish soap to the water, stir, leave it like that for 15-30s, remove almost all of the water and then clean with a dish sponge, the caramel will come away nicely and you can move on to the next batch with a clean pan

chocooooo