How to make your own chocolate

Name: How to make your own chocolate
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 48 h
Yield: 20
Cuisine: Swiss cuisine
Ingredients: 200 g cocoa butter; 1 kg cocoa nibs; 800 g granulated sugar; 7 g soy lecithin

Making your own chocolate

Does making your own chocolate sound like a dream come true? Then let’s make it happen right now! In this video and blog post, we’ll explain how you can make your own chocolate from scratch at home. In principle, it’s quite simple, but you’ll need a few pieces of equipment that are absolutely essential. Themelangeurisprobably the most important of these, and without it, the chocolate wouldn’t turn out as beautifully smooth and delicate as we know and love it. We’ll explain how to use the melangeur properly and what you need to bear in mind when making couverture. Be sure to give it a go and surprise your friends and family with chocolate you’ve made yourself! You really are completely free to choose the composition of your chocolate here, and you can even mix two different varieties of beans or cocoa nibs. We have an exquisite selectionofhigh-quality, flavourful beans and nibs in our online shop.

Key figures

Quantity:2 kg

Preparation time:20 to 30 minutes

Conching time: 24 to 48 hours

Level of difficulty: Easy

Shelf life: Up to one year

Ingredients for 60% dark chocolate

Cocoa butter		200 g
Cocoa nibs		1 kg
Granulated sugar		800 g
Vanilla seeds \| optional		1 pinch
soya lecithin		4–10 g

Ingredients for 35% milk

Cocoa butter		500 g
Cocoa nibs		200 g
Whole milk powder		400 g
Skimmed milk powder		100 g
Granulated sugar		760 g
Malt extract		40 g
Vanilla seeds \| optional		1 pinch
Soya lecithin \| optional		4–10 g

Manufacture

Gently heat the cocoa butter in a bain-marie. Make sure you do not heat it to more than 40 ºC.Thenpour the liquidcocoa butterinto yourmelangeurandswitch it on. Now add a small amount of cocoa nibs. It is important not to add all the nibs at once, as this can cause the grinder’s millstones to jam. Generally speaking, it is important to add the nibs in small batches over a period of about 10 minutes. You can always tell from the sound the melangeur is making whether you can add more nibs or not. If the sounds are still quite loud and rattling, the cocoa nibs are still being ground; if, on the other hand, the sounds are quieter and smoother, you can add more nibs.

It’s also very important that you keep reheating the mass using ahot-air hairdryer. As you keep adding new nibs, the cocoa mass cools down quite quickly, which means the melangeur has to work a bit harder. To make the melangeur’s job easier, you need to warm the mixture with the hot-air gun. You can either heat the cocoa mixture from above (don’t get too close to the nibs, otherwise you’ll burn them) or heat the metal bowl from below.

Once all the nibs are in the machine, you can let it grind for about 10 minutes to make the mixture a bit more uniform and smooth. Every now and then, use the Melangeur’s rubber scraper (supplied) to scrape the stone rollers and the other parts. The more often you do this, the less you’ll lose later on, as anything that’s too coarse will be sorted out at the end. After the 10-minute grinding cycle, you can now add the sugar. However, if you’re making milk couverture, you must first incorporate the milk powder and malt extract, let the machine run for 2 to 3 minutes, and only then add the sugar. Don’t forget to reheat the mixture a little from time to time to ensure it stays nice and warm and runny.

Keep an eye out when choosing sugar

You are completely free to choose whichever sugar you like; you should simply be aware that the sugar can have a significant impact on the flavour of your chocolate. For an authentic cocoa bean flavour, we recommend using standard granulated sugar. If, on the other hand, you’d prefer to use brown sugar, raw cane sugar or panela, that’s fine too, of course. Just make sure the sugar is dry! Coconut blossom sugar is also suitable for this recipe. We would advise against using sugar substitutes such as erythritol and xylitol, as xylitol, for example, has a cooling effect which in turn negatively affects the flavour and the creamy texture. If you like this effect, it will of course work for your chocolate-making too.

For our bean-to-bar couverture, we use only sugar from Swiss sugar beet. This allows us to avoid long transport routes whilst supporting our local farmers.

Now use the rubber scraper to scrape down the sides, the rollers and the other parts of the melangeur once more, to ensure everything is ground evenly. You now have a coarse, grainy cocoa mass. You can now leave the melangeur to run for at least 24 hours.

Depending on the type of bean, you can now decide whether to leave the lid off the melangeur or keep it on. The idea behind this is to remove the bitter compounds from the chocolate. For example, if you’ve used a bean that’s quite tart and bitter and you don’t want these flavours in your chocolate, then you should conche the chocolate with the lid off. You may have experienced driving past a large chocolate factory and noticing the wonderful aroma of chocolate and cocoa in the air? Well, these factories do nothing other than conch the couverture with the ‘lid off’. Even though these are bitter compounds, it’s still the scent of chocolate.

If you’ve used a fairly fruity and mild bean, you can leave the lid on without any problems.

After 24 hours (you can leave the couverture to set for longer, but given the quantity, 24 hours is more than enough to produce a velvety-smooth couverture), the chocolate should now look like the one in the photo. The couverture is lovely and runny and smooth. Be sure to give the runny couverture a taste. Now you can decide for yourself whether you’d like to add vanilla seeds or not. The vanilla note can sometimes complement the flavour and enhance the chocolate notes, but that’s up to you. With a dark couverture made from high-quality beans, we tend to advise against it; with milk chocolate, however, we find that it complements it very well. If the couverture is too thick, you can add a small amount of soya lecithin. Start with around 4 g and add a little more if necessary. You can add up to 15 g to the couverture. Then let the chocolate mix for another 2 to 3 minutes before switching off the mixer.

Completion

Press down the levers on the side of the melangeur and tilt it to pour the liquid couverture into a bowl. Carefully scrape the remaining chocolate out of the melangeur. You may still find small, gritty bits remaining, particularly around the grinding blades. Make sure you do not pour this part of the chocolate into the bowl; only pour the part that is completely liquid and finely ground. You can put the leftovers, which are still slightly gritty, into a separate container and use them perfectly for baking or hot chocolate.

Next, remove the cover from the grinding blades, lift them out and scrape any remaining chocolate off them too. Place this portion of the chocolate into the separate container. You can now also remove the metal bowl from the melangeur and, once it has been thoroughly scraped out, wash it out with hot water and a little washing-up liquid.

You now need to process the liquid couverture further. To do this, you must temper the couverture. In the case of homemade chocolate, this can only be done using the tablier method, as there are no perfectly tempered drops available to use for seeding. You can find out how to temper chocolate in ourCouverture Tempering Course, or indeed in ourBean-to-Bar Course. There, you’ll also learn lots of useful and fascinating facts about cocoa. We really recommend this course to anyone interested in making their own chocolate.

You can then use the tempered couverture to mould small and large bars, make your own pralines or create chocolate breaks. Enhance it withhigh-quality ingredientsor leave it just as it is. It’s your own chocolate and you decide what to do with it. The main thing is that you enjoy it!

Storage & Shelf life

The finished couverture can be kept for up to a year. Dark couverture can be kept for up to two years if stored loosely, or even longer if stored under optimal conditions.

It is best to store the couverture in a cool place, away from direct sunlight and other light sources. The chocolate should be packed in an airtight container wherever possible.