Trying to make milk chocolate in your kitchen might seem like an exhausting process. Milk powder and cocoa powder are the main ingredients of homemade chocolate. One can add additional flavours like vanilla essence, espresso, cinnamon or chocolate essence.
The rewards for making milk chocolate at home are literally sweet. Milk chocolate consists of only 45% of cocoa in pure form. Remaining ingredients are a combination of sugar, cocoa butter, lecithin and most important- milk.
The bonus gift of creating milk chocolates in your kitchen is the ability to gift these sweet treats to friends and family during important occasions and celebrations. If you get to be an expert in making chocolates on your own, you might never buy them from the store, ever again.
Ingredients:
- Cocoa beans: 2 lbs
- Sugar : 30 oz
- Cocoa butter: 20 oz
- Lecithin: 1 tsp
- Powdered milk: 10 oz
- Juice mixer
- Cookie sheet
- Conching machine for chocolate
Method:
- Select and buy the cocoa beans. A wide choice of coffee beans is available in the market: Criollo is ideal for making fine chocolate and Forastero is a bit bitter than Criollo. Trinitario is a combination of Forastero and Criollo. Nacional is utilized rarely for creating chocolate. Buy cocoa beans from half to 1 cup from the local chocolate supplier.
- Spread on a cookie sheet that is flat, all the beans. Set oven to around 325 degree F.
- For 10-35 minutes, roast the beans. As the beans are roasting, slowly reduce oven temperature to 300 F. You will understand that there has been sufficient roasting of beans when you hear ‘cracking sounds’. This sound is emitted as and when vapour (water) is emanated by the beans.
- By cracking the beans in half, get rid of the cocoa beans’ husk. To crack the beans, one can utilize a nut cracker or hammer. This procedure is termed as ‘winnowing’ and can consume a lot of time.
- Next, cocoa beans must be ground. A regular juicer mixer can be used for this purpose, but don’t use a grain or coffee grinder because on grinding, the cocoa beans release a cocoa liqueur.
- The sugar must be ground to a delicate powder and this reduces conching time for 3 hours.
- Add the cocoa butter, powdered milk, sugar and lecithin in the cocoa powder. The next step requires a particular machine that helps refine the chocolate through agitating and ‘folding’ it. This is the step commonly called as ‘conching’. It lasts a minimum of 24 hours and a maximum of a couple of days. Longer is the conching process, the finer will be the chocolate.
- Dip or mould the chocolate. One can add fruits like strawberry or nuts like pecans while the chocolate is still in melted form. You also can utilize plastic moulds to give a shape to the chocolates. For instance, you can use moulds in heart shape to make love heart chocolates and gift them to your valentine.
These are the steps to make delicious milk chocolates at home.
