It is pure fat from the chocolate (cocao) plant. It comes in a hard, solid block that you either break chunks off using a knife, or use a cheese grater to make flakes with. Lately I have been adding it to my coffee in place of butter or coconut oil. It tastes amazing when blended into coffee with some heavy cream, and tastes like a cafe mocha without all the sugar.
where did you find food grade? I've checked whole foods before and they didn't have it. I want it to make my own chocolate.
I have cacao beans They can be ground with coffee beans or you can grind and add them with maca powder n chocolate almond milk ..delicious And of course used in baking recipes :chef:
I got mine from Lori's Natural Foods here in Rochester. You can also find it online. I use Navitas brand. http://navitasnaturals.com/product/434/Cacao-Butter.html
Cocoa butter is a unique and amazing lipid, it has six phases of crystallization. I have studied this shit, I used to fancy myself an amateur chocolatier! The fifth phase is what we know of as in a chocolate bar, it's shiny and hard, it will snap when you break it. After a long time sitting around the lipids slowly reach the sixth phase where gets so hard the fats begin to migrate to the surface and cause the whitish 'bloom' you see on really old chocolates.Type III crystals will not set up hard and type IV may set hard but it will look dull and not have the snap of well tempered chocolate with a type V crystalline structure. Those chocolate flavored coverings you get at the store are not chocolate, they are called couverture and they don't contain cocoa butter, they use a certain type of palm fat to set up hard. That shit should be illegal IMO, lol When you melt cocoa butter, a chocolate bar for instance, and hold it at a temperature above 105 f it will lose it's temper and will not set up hard again, the type five crystals will not form unless encouraged by seeding with already formed type V crystals and /or subjecting it to shearing forces, smearing it across a smooth surface like a piece of marble at a lower temperature, around 82 F. Once the type v crystals form you can keep it at up to 88 degrees and not disturb the crystals. You can then pour it in moulds or coat things and it will set up hard when it cools. If you melt cocoa butter or chocolate and want it not to lose its temper, don't heat it past about 88-90 degrees. Meliai, I hate to break your heart but you can't make smooth chocolate without a conching machine. and you don't add cocoa butter, you make it directly from the beans, they contain all the butter necessary. The beans are 'conched' or very finely milled between steel rollers in stages. it must be done slowly as to not heat the chocolate too much. It takes about 7 hours to make the beans into chocolate liquor. Then it must be tempered and encouraged to crystallize in to the type v form as described above. Cool, here's a home conching machine! http://onthecocoatrail.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/dsc03776.jpg Oh wait I think thats just a tempering machine, sorry
