Here are the reasons why I don’t use liquids in chocolate and why I don’t use agave anymore.
- When you add liquid to chocolate it causes the cacao butter to seize. You have probably noticed this; you’re making a batch of lovely chocolate, everything is looking amazing and delicious, you’re proud (and rightfully so), you add that liquid sweetener and that’s where it all goes wrong. The mix thickens right up and you wonder what happened, right ? Well, you added liquid to a fat and oil and water don’t mix. You can use small amount of non oil based liquids, such as Medicine Flower Flavour Extracts, but no more than ½ tsp per 450g batch of chocolate.
- Using liquids in chocolate creates a thick, fudge like consistency. I think this is self explanatory; when chocolate seizes, it thickens so it makes sense that the overall consistency would be thick on the palate. Yes?
- I never felt quite right about using agave, but I used a lot of it for a long time. I did what so many people did and I just trusted the information being given to me about it. After the new nutritional information came out about it being similar to high fructose corn syrup, I cut it right out of my diet and felt much better for it. I now use Xylitol, Coconut Sugar, Honey and Maple Syrup as liquid sweeteners in my raw desserts.
- A little while back you got an email from me with a Basic Dark Chocolate recipe and in that recipe I mention powdering your sweeteners. This is because if you add granulated sweeteners to chocolate they will not break down like you might think they would. They will remain granulated and that will be very apparent in the finished product. In order to combat this, I powder all my granulated sweeteners in the vita mix or a coffee grinder before using them. That includes, raw cane sugar (I don’t use it but you might like to), coconut sugar, xylitol and erythritol. It doesn’t take as much time or effort as you might think, as long as you have a vita mix. Just powder up a kilo or five and you’re ready to rock any time you need it.
We cover all of this and way more information about raw chocolate making in my live and online courses. Click here for the live classes and here for the online classes.
Want more of a scientific explanation? Cool! Click here.
