Trying to figure out what went wrong??

[MaineMomof4]

Ok so I made some chocolate for the first time tonight, two of the three kinds I made turned out great! The last kind I attempted was 1/4 cup cacao butter, 1/4 coconut oil, 2 tbs agave, about 1tsp mesquite, 1tsp coconut extract, annd 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. I mixed it all up, put it in the fridge and the agave, mesquite, and I believe even the extracts separated from t he coconut oil and cacao butter! So when I took them out of the mold there was almost like a wet glaze on top of a creamy white chocolate which basically had no flavor :( What can I do to fix this? I was thinking I can put the chocolates back in a bowl and put that in warm water to melt it back down and either add something to it or do something to give some flavor and get it to a point where it wont separate. Does anyone know why this may have happened or what I can do to fix it?? Thank you!!

[RawKnitster]

I've had that happen before, but it didn't happen in the fridge, it happened while blending. One second it was blending, and the next it had separated. I was able to mix it back together by hand, but it was very tedious and some of the oil simply would not blend back in. The chocolate hardened with a white coating of oil on top.

Since then I am very careful to add the cacao in last and not overmix. I prefer to blend the ingredients in a Magic Bullet just enough to mix together, then add the cacao and mix gently by hand.

I would try remelting it and stirring by hand. Hope it works!

[MaineMomof4]

I did mix it all by hand to begin with. I melted the cacao butter and coconut oil and then mixed in the extract, agave, and tiny bit of mesquite powder. Do you think I needed more powder of some kind? I will try to remelt but I hope the same thing doesn't happen again.

[RawKnitster]

Interesting. I'm not sure but I'd guess the cacao butter is the temperamental ingredient. Chocolate can be tricky. Something about the tempering process??? We need an expert opinion on this one.

I'd like to know how that turn out. :)

[Conscious Midwife]

remelt and add carob...I know not the same recipie but just trying to keep you from wasting

the ingredients you used all have different melting and solidifying points.

[RawKnitster]

I did a some Google searching and can't find anything about separating. The tempering is a very careful melting and cooling process for chocolate so that can't be it. I Googled cacao recipes and cacao butter recipes. The latter search brought up this David Wolfe site: http://www.naked-chocolate.com/recipes/ None of these cacao butter recipes mention a potential problem or caution about blending.

Lots of good recipes out there in the ethernet! I saved a few for another day. I made RP brownies tonight. :)

[MaineMomof4]

Thanks for the input