Cacao butter

[Beachhunter]

Can you make Cacao butter from Cacao Powder? If so, what do you mix it with?

Thanks.

[snowdrop]

no,
unfortunately all the cacao butter has been removed from the chocolate to make the powder.

(cacao butter + cacao pwd = chocolate
therefore
chocolate - cacoa butter = cacao powder)

sorry.

that's why hershey & nestle chocolate tastes so horrible
they remove the butter and add waxes to the powder since they get boca dollars for the butter pharmasutically.

aren't you glad you eat raw??? :)

[baltochef]

Beachhunter

I purchase cocoa butter from www.naturalzing.com

I use it in raw chocolate recipes to supplement, & sometimes replace the other fats..

Although it is more expensive per ounce than good organic coconut butter, I feel that it is worth the extra investment for several reasons..

First , it allows me to reduce somewhat the amount of raw cocoa in the recipe..

I can do this because the intense chocolate smell & flavor of the cocoa butter means that I can get the same chocolate flavor with less cocoa in the recipe..

Remember, all of the cocoa butter has been removed from the chocolate in order to create two seperate products, cocoa powder & cocoa butter..

In all recipes that use cocoa powder as a flavoring agent, some other form of fat is used to approximate the mouth feel that you would get had you used whole chocolate in the recipe instead..

By adding back into the recipe some of the cocoa butter, you are recreating some of the flavor & texture of whole chocolate..

Every single raw chocolate dessert that I have created myself (or duplicated from someone else's recipe) where I have used cocoa butter in the recipe, the results from tasters has been overwhelmingly in favor of the cocoa butter version..

Second, because I am attempting to eat fewer created raw desserts, especially chocolate ones, I am willing to spend a little more to create the dessert..

My enjoyment of the dessert is proportional to the flavor of the dessert..The better the dessert tastes, the more enjoyment I derive from it, & the less of it I am willing to eat in order to feel fulfillment..

Bruce

[River Mom]

can you just buy it still together??? what's it before they separate it?

[baltochef]

river girl

At one time I was contemplating making my own chocolate from scratch, so the research I did allows me to explain this to you..

Inside of the cured, fermented cacao bean are locked up the two primary ingredients that we know as cocoa powder & cocoa butter (this is a VERY simplified explanation!)..

Old fashioned chocolate manufacturers used a mechanical device made of cast iron that looks somewhat like a huge squat electric mixer..Think of a bowl that is 6 feet wide & several feet deep!!

Into the bowl are poured the cacao beans..Hundreds of pounds of them..

Inside of the bowl are several huge cast iron rollers that apply downwards pressure to the cocao beans, slowly crushing them between the rollers & the bottom of the bowl..

As the beans are slowly crushed into finer & finer particles, they release the cocoa butter fats into the solids..

The resulting mixture, which takes many, many hours to create, is called chocolate liqueur..

Sugar & other ingredients are then added to the chocolate liqueur & processed to become chocolate..

So the answer to your question is that you can buy it together..It's called a cacao bean, or cacao nibs..

Bruce

[subbacultcha]

Shazzie (detoxyourworld.com) sells cacao liquor, but I don't know if it can be shipped to USA.

While we're on the topic of cacao, I'm a bit confused about something! Why are raw cacao products so much more expensive than say, cocoa powder? Surely it's the same stuff, just raw :confused:

[Beachhunter]

So if I melt cacao nibbs in the dehydrator, can I use this similarly to cacao butter in recipes. Yes, I am showing how naive I am on this subject. Sorry about that but I do appreciate all the help I get from this forum. I can buy the nibbs at HFS. I know I can order cacao butter but would like to save on shipping charges if I can use the nibbs.

Thanks.

[RawKev]

I don't think the nibs would melt, being that they are just the whole bean chopped up.

[subbacultcha]

Yeah, you wouldn't be able to melt the nibs. That'd be like trying to melt a nut. I don't know how they extract the butter from the beans but it won't be by melting.

[baltochef]

Beachhunter

The only way to get the cocoa butter fat in the beans to release is to crush them under pressure..

Hersheys & other large manufacturers use high speed machinery that is substantially different from what I described above..

Scharffenberger's uses the above type machinery, as they feel that it produces superior results..

It is slower, & results in more expensive chocolate..

The short & the long of is that there is no inexpensive way to produce chocolate liqueur or cocoa butter in the home..

You could purchase hundreds, perhaps thousands of of pounds of the most expensive cocoa butter by the time you invested in the least expensive setup to crush cacao beans into chocolate liqueur..

Then you would need further expensive equipment to seperate the cocoa butter from the chocolate liqueur..

And even further equipment to turn the solids into cocoa powder..

There are no short cuts..

Purchase raw cocoa butter or cocoa powder from a reputable online purveyor..

Bruce

[kyri]

So if I melt cacao nibbs in the dehydrator, can I use this similarly to cacao butter in recipes. Yes, I am showing how naive I am on this subject. Sorry about that but I do appreciate all the help I get from this forum. I can buy the nibbs at HFS. I know I can order cacao butter but would like to save on shipping charges if I can use the nibbs.

Thanks.
i do the same stuff, get advice, then try to do the un-do-able lol. i tried to do this, and they just turn harder and harder, i even tried to melt it in a pot, they do nothing but stay hard..:( and start to brown and smell

[kyri]

hey, where can you buy the butter in toronto , ontario canada. anyway?