a disaster!

2nd June 2021

Ingredients

Sticking with 70% dark chocolate with 10% additional cocoa butter so that our batches are comparable, we used:

752g cocoa nibs
376g cane sugar
125g cocoa butter

Roasting

We tried a slightly higher temperature than our previous roast to make sure it wasn’t underdone.

28 minutes at 110C

The roasted nibs tasted really good, we were excited for how well this batch was going to turn out...

Refining

We stuck with the same refining time as the previous batch because it came out so well.

28 hours

Tasting

Unfortunately, this is where it all went wrong. Our tempering was slightly off and the bars bloomed a bit as they set in the fridge. No problem, this has happened before and we’ve just melted it down and started again. This time, however, it was late and we were tired and we left the bars in the moulds in the fridge overnight. This was a bad idea. Water and chocolate don’t mix, and when we checked the bars in the morning they were covered with condensation. We tasted a bit to check if they were OK, but they were not. The moisture had ruined them, the sugar had separated from the chocolate and recrystallised, so it was grainy and sandy. There was nothing to be done. Really disappointing.

Notes

We will never leave the bars in the fridge longer than necessary!