Go to the Recipe: Dark Matter
I wish you would all make it into small bars and sell it. That way a person could try it, see how much or if they liked it. Just a thought
incredible.
The Dark Matter sounds amazing but for those of us without $500+ to invest in a conche, is there an acceptable alternative process to grind the elixir into a smooth creamy texture... maybe something utilizing a Vitamix, sous vide or other equipment a home chef might already have?
Whats the difference between the $500 Conche and this? http://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Dura-Grinder-Kneader-110-volt/dp/B00AFR0ILE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423229554&sr=8-1&keywords=Melanger
This is really cool. This is also badly in need of a video!
This recipe was the deciding factor for me in purchasing this course, but now I find that it requires equipment I don't have! :-( I, too, would love to know if there is a way to replace the conche.
I hope none, as I bought a used one today from Amazon.
The wet grinder link provided below does seem to be the equipment used in the picture of the recipe. However, I would say it is a hefty investment to try only this recipe. I, and I believe many others, am wondering if there is a way to make a batch without a conche, or wet grinder?
I am eager to see an update! I am also contemplating whether or not to buy the wet grinder in the link.
And here I thought you were using the fats in the coffee beans.
If someone is allergic to chocolate, I'd presume they are allergic to cocoa butter, right? Are there any possible substitutes for cocoa butter for this recipe? Would Coconut Oil work?
CHEF STEPS: Is there a way to make this without a Conche?
From what I understand from looking into melangers, normal wet grinders won't be able to run for more than a couple of hours before overheating. Apparently wet grinders for chocolate are cooled so that they can run for longer periods of time.
There is something wrong with the page (naming contest page) containing the video of this. I keep trying to watch it, and every time I open the page, it bogs down my browser.
WE NEED MORE CLARIFICATION ABOUT THIS RECIPE! I really really want to try this recipe, but I can't seem to put my thumb on what equipment to buy. Has anyone tried this at home and succeeded?
Bob, did you have any luck with the model you got?
Yes, just chatted with Grant. You can do this using a blender. It won't be exactly the same, as it won't be as smooth, but it is doable. It would be similar to how people have made chocolate at home by scratch using a blender or mortar and pestle. The stronger and more powerful your blender the better. In this case you use the blender for 5 minutes or so to get it as smooth as possible.
I was decide to purchase this class because this recipe too, but i'm student who love to cooking and can't imagine how can i find 500$ to buy a conche. So please give me the other way to try this recipe at home without conche. Thanks
see below
thank you
Just made this at home, a word of caution when doing it in a blender, be aware that some blenders will heat this up A LOT. I have a Vitamix and it made it pretty smooth but it also heated up the mixture a lot when going at top speed.
Here's an update for those wondering if you can do this at home without a conche. The answer is yes you can, kind of.
I started by trying to grind the beans in my food processor. This was a no go since it wasn't giving me a fine grind. So, I transferred the beans to the dry container of my Vitamix and I was able to process all the beans in two batches. The Vitamix gave me a nice, fine grind on the beans. A home coffee grinder would work but you would probably have to do many more batches to grind all the beans.
Once the beans were ground, I followed the directions for melting the cocoa butter, and I added the liquid soy lecithin, and then whisked until combined. From there I added the cocoa butter mixture to the vanilla, salt and ground coffee beans. What you end up is a mixture with the texture of wet sand. I didn't think the mixture would blend but I dropped it all in the large container of my Vitamix anyways and hoped for the best. Using the plunger and starting on setting 2 or 3 I got it going and from there it blended quite nicely. I gradually increased the speed until it processed. A word of warning, a Vitamix spinning on top speed will generate A LOT of heat. The mixture got very hot and I had to slow it down a bit. Ultimately I mixed it for about 6 or 7 minutes and it got a fairly good job of getting a smooth mixture but there was still a slight grit to the mixture at the end. I transferred the Dark Matter to chocolate molds and got some decent looking chocolates.
Is it necessary to use "Liquide" Soy Lecithin or can i also use the pouder
From what I have heard about making chocolate, the coconut oil doesn't work in chocolate for two reasons. The first is that a chemical in the fact can react to chemicals in the cocoa creating soap-like bubbles and an off-taste. I don't know whether this would be the case with coffee, as I don't know all that much about the chemistry involved. The second issue is that cocoa butter remains solid at room temperature, allowing the chocolate to remain solid. In other words, with coconut oil, you would probably need to keep it in the fridge. A palm oil might work better if you want the melting point to be higher. Hope this helps.
So how do they taste?
Two questions: 1) Any way to estimate the caffeine content compared with a cup of coffee? The weight ratio is straightforward but this isn't brewed, so...? 2) Assuming this needs to be tempered before it's cast, any suggestions on a suitable method? Would tabling be the only option without a previous batch from which to seed?
My wife has a chocolate allergy, but can do cocoa butter (the primary ingredient in white chocolate).
UPDATES @BOBUNGER UPDATES?
One question this product need tempering??after cooling
They are the exact same machine, except for some cosmetic differences. Also, the comment regarding "normal wet grinders" is incorrect; they typically run for many hours to break down the rice and dal batter used to make crispy dosas. There is no additional cooling for "chocolate" wet grinders (no such thing). Think about it: if you cooled the chocolate it wouldn't stay fluid, and for "normal" wet grinders, if they overheated the dosa batter would be ruined, or at least the starches would coagulate to some extent. There is very little heat generated by the action of the pair of granite stones slowly rolling over the granite base, especially when what little heat there would be is sunk by the liquid being processed, and then sunk again by the thin metal walls conducting heat to the atmosphere. And the motor itself is in that second silo to the right of the grinding chamber. The $500 that company is charging is pure Yuppie-Gotta-Have-It profit.
I can't wait to make this! What is the reason you use liquid lecithin instead of powdered?
I would have to disagree with you. First off, the cooling isn't for the chocolate, but for the motor as chocolate refining can take up to 3 *days*, not just a few hours (depending on the final product that you're going for). Additionally, the same company that makes the $500-600 models also makes "normal wet grinders" for considerably less. Both product lines look very similar, but the expensive model is just built to tighter tolerances and to withstand very long operating times. The CocoaT Melanger models (what CS linked to above) are often the first choice for many small-scale artisan chocolate makers.
I made a few drops w/o tempering and got more of a bend than a break and a frosted finish. I tempered the remainder by bringing to 127f, dropping ~1/3 to the mid 70's and re-incorporating into to the main batch. The final temp was 89.5f. The product for me was thicker to pour and mould, but came out glossy and with a nice snap.
I did this for myself by assuming ~ 17g coffee per cup of espresso which comes out about 1 espresso per 40g (1.4 oz) of Dark Matter.
I made this and I had a few questions if any of you are chemists or food scientists:
http://www.gratuitousfoodity.com/2016/02/27/dark-matter-coffee-bean-chocolate/
I tried tempering the chocolate using The Food Lab's sous-vide method, but had poor results. After some research, I learned that coffee beans are about 15% coffee oil by weight. Coffee oil is 50% linoleic acid, which should reduce the melting point of the cocoa butter/coffee fat mixture. Would the linoleic acid in the coffee oil prevent the crystallization of the cocoa butter polymorphs? I wasn't able to dive deep enough to understand how the mono-, di-, and triglycerides will affect hardness and crystallization. If the cocoa butter will still crystallize properly with a different fatty acid mix, is there a formula to determine what the temperature cutoffs should be based on how much coffee oil is added?
For people with experience making chocolate: what is the optimum ratio of cocoa butter to cocoa solids? This recipe creates the equivalent of a 76% chocolate before accounting for any extra bitterness introduced by the coffee oil and solids. I was thinking of upping the sugar and cocoa butter to get something closer to a 65% bar to help offset some of the bitterness.
Finally, for those of you looking for a cheaper melanger, you might want to use the one I linked in my post. I too looked for a cheaper alternative to the Cocoatown and many people at Chocolate Alchemy have used the Premier Wonder Grinder.
http://www.amazon.com/Premier-Wonder-Table-Grinder-110v/dp/B004OPIBV2
I was able to get a good temper in my batch: I tempered the remainder by bringing to 127f, dropping ~1/3 to the mid 70's by tabling and re-incorporating into to the main batch. The final temp was 89.5f. The product for me was thicker to pour and mould, but came out glossy and with a nice snap.
I like your idea of using a plastic bag to portion into molds. I will try that next time.
w.r.t. variations, I added 10% powdered organic whole milk and increased the sugar somewhat trying for a less bitter version. Next time I will add more cocoa butter as you are suggesting, I also believe my version is too high in solids w/o enough fat.
One thing I noticed what that the hot liquor right out of the conch had a much more pronounced flavor than the tempered product. I added milk solids based upon the warm flavor and found that the milk really took some of the high-notes off of the coffee and led to a much more muted experience. Next time I will likely up the cocoa butter significantly and the sugar a little bit instead of adding milk.
I have shared dark matter with several friends and have found setting expectations to be really important. If they expect dark chocolate with coffee notes, or really anything chocolaty, I find they are very surprised and only the most adventurous recover. If they expect black coffee in bar form (and they like black coffee,) they tend to enjoy it the first time much more. Personally I have found it has really grown on me over a few months time as my brain adjusts.
Most lately I mixed 20% of dark matter into a milk chocolate, tempered and molded. I found this "mocha" chocolate to be a great mix of the two flavors and that it is much more accessible favor wise to most people.
I would be willing to buy a melanger if I knew more recipes that used it. I don't want to shell out $200- $300 on what alton brown would call a "unitasker."
so apart from chocolate and I imagine peanut butter/almond butter/etc, what can this thing make?
Since you are using whole coffee bean, the percantage of caffeine, depending what variatal of arabica you are using and where it's from, is 0,9%-1,4% of coffee dry weight.
I finally got around to trying this. From the comments, it appeared as if the coffee flavor was almost too strong so I modified the recipe as follows: 35% cocoa butter, 25% sugar, 20% coffee and 20% powdered milk. People are requesting this over the "normal chocolate" that I make. Definitely something different, but delicious!
It says vanilla bean chopped, does that mean you are using the whole bean? I've never used the whole bean before, something new for me. By the way my first batch of dark matter turned out perfect with great snap after chilling. I happened to have a Spectra 10 on hand that a customer donated to me, now I have reason to test it out some more.
OK - been a while since I made this stuff but I have some updates. First off, using coffee grounds that have been used for brewing already (then dried again) are better than fresh. Less acidic, less tannic and less caffeine. So that’s one. Another is the above recipe can be easily made into a milk dark matter by adding 120g NFMS (dried milk powder) and cutting a 100g of coffee. The last update is I have now tried this formula with a few other solids substitutes. freeze dried pea, corn and nut powders to name a few. Happy cooking;)
I used the whole bean in mine, also a new idea to me, but it turned out great.
Really interesting idea to reuse the coffee grounds. So thrifty too..
I've used the machine to make a pistachio butter that turned out really well, I found the recipe here at ChefSteps
Thinking more about this today. I've heard how much water can disrupt things when you are trying to temper chocolate. How dry did you get the grounds (completely I assume?). Did you do anything special to dry them out, or just spread them on a sheet pan and wait?
Has anyone tried making this but with trablit, i.e. coffee reduced into a syrup, instead of ground coffee beans? It'll be a different flavor for sure, but I imagine that'd be another way to avoid having to invest in a conche.
Thanks that's what I did too. I also got mixed reviews on the strength of the coffee, I'd say 80% of the people I gave samples to loved it and the rest just thought it was too much coffee. I loved it myself! I'm making another batch replacing half the coffee with cacoa nibs. I'll see how that turns out.
Hey, Grant -- have you tried any fat substitutes?
I'm brainstorming a Boursin-inspired savory truffle of triple-crème enrobed in a "chocolate" that uses garlic powder as the primary (or sole) solid and lard, ghee, or tallow as the fat...probably omitting most/all of the sugar. To get a little crunch, I'm thinking of coating with a finish of flaked fried herbs like parsley, maybe chives.
I would be down for some trial and error while tempering, but do you think I would be totally playing with fire by subbing out the cocoa butter for something with a little more of an umami stank on it?
If you had a high powered blender (vitamix) couldn't you just make the "coffee chocolate" in the blender instead of a conche?
Hi TJ, in terms of allergies, technically it is only the protein that causes allergic reactions. As cocoa butter is just fat, there should be no issue. Coconut oil would give a terrible waxy feel to the chocolate as it doesn't have the same crystalline fat structure that cocoa butter does.
@chefsteps do you know where we can rent a melanger/concher? I have a lot of chocolate equipment but not that and would like to try before buying one. Seems like a good business to add to the Studio Pass
I have no idea of a place that rents equipment like that... sorry. We have found some nice smaller ones in the 250-300 range though.. sorry if that is not helpful but most places don't rent out food production equipment for sanitary reasons.
Any water in the chocolate making process will cause it to instantly seize into a solid mass that can no longer be refined. To reduce it to a syrup would not remove all the water. I suppose you could add in freeze-dried coffee powder but it probably wouldn't be the same texture as all the very fine fibre particles have been removed
Will this one suffice https://www.melangers.com/products/small-chocolate-refiner? Thinking about this one or a tilting one. Because I would love to know before I spent the money, thanks in advance!
It sure will.
I wondered if you raise the cacoa butter content (33%), do you lower the tempering to 29C-84F? And is it possible to take te process to far if you start with a pretty fine ground, can the 24 hours do harm(even if you keep the temperature low?
You can't really go too far, which would make your matter finer and finer. The tempering is a bit more finicky, with chocolate you don't really know what the ratio of butter to bean is exactly from producer to producer. That's why for the most part they give you the ideal ranges for their products on the package. But you can draw a conclusion that the higher the Butter content the higher you can go on the temper. But it might just take a few goes at it to dial it in on your specific batch.
