Sideshow wrote:Does anyone who puts the ingredients into the milk to steam at once ever worry about getting the inside of the steam wand or the tip dirty? I dutifully purge after every use, but I'd still be worried about the effects of potentially sucking up solid (even melted/dissolved) food stuffs into the wand. Maybe I'm being too cautious.

I have had a tiny bit in the wand but a good purge got rid of it.


Randy

I use:



At my bar for cocoa lattes and mochas. A heaping teaspoon in a 12oz frothing pitcher half full of milk makes a very nice and frothy hot cocoa.

I'm not a fan of drinking chocolate.

There are a couple of points here worth making that actually reflect hot cocoa as much as they do in making chocolate ice cream bases and the like.

Chocolate consists of cocoa solids, cocoa butter, and fillers/sweeteners/preservatives/emulsifiers (sugar and milk solids, depending on the stated %). Natural processed chocolate has a lower pH than Dutch process which add alkalizing agent to the cocoa nibs.

Soluble in water are obviously the fillers and so are some of the cocoa solids (partially soluble, partially suspended in a water solution).

But cocoa butter is not soluble in water. It floats. Not good.

The easy choice is to use hot chocolate mix which is mostly cocoa solids, less than 1% cocoa fats and emulsifiers (usually Lecithin from Soy and Glycerol Monostreate).

In Ice cream we prefer glycerol monostreate (E471) as it produces a smoother texture. Egg yolks can also be used as an emulsifier for the cocoa butter but the flavor becomes more like chocolate mousse.

Points to consider:
1. The use of a "real" chocolate (couverture, compund or real) requires emulsification and/or stabilization.
2. Emulsification requires an emulsifier and heavy beating with a whisk (to create the boundary between the continuous and dispered phases).
3. Conversely, using a stabilizer like corn starch also helps by thickening the solution (using the milk's emulsifiers to prevent separation - but also corn fibre gum is fortunately ambiphilic and can thus emulsify somewhat on its own - see https://ialimentoslem1.files.wordpress. ... lizers.pdf). I think it works in much the same way as a bit of mustard helps stabilize mayonnaise (mustard has Lecithin).
4. I could not find a reference for how pH aids stability*, except in a pass by fashion stating that acidity helps stabilize oil-in-water emulsions while alkalinity stabilizes water-in-oil emulsions (and that it has to do with the polarity of the extra ions). In theory that means natural processed chocolate should make for more stable emulsions.

Ramon Morales in Ch states that low methoxyl pectin can also be used to stabilize thick drinking chocolate. He also recommends E471 as a stabilizer if it is to be frozen for storage. He states that separation is inevitable from thin drinking chocolate unless emulsifiers and stabilizers are added and recommends that bottles be shaken routinely to avoid FLAG from forming ("Flag" due to the separation: Milk and cocoa fats rise as a white layer to the top, while dark suspended particles sink to the bottom, while the middle is the lighter solution - appearing like a 3 layer "flag").

His starting recipe for thick chocolate is 900gr Milk, 100gr 35% cream, 300gr 64% chocolate (must be couverture with lecithin), 30gr corn starch and vanilla and 1gr salt. For thin chocolate his starting recipe is 1000gr milk, 300gr couverture (71% cocoa mass), 1gr salt.

HTH...

*Acids are usually key in water based emulsions due to spoilage concerns (where water is the continuous phase, any waterborne can spread to the entire batch; conversely, when fat is the continuous phase - like in butter - waterborne pathogens get stuck in their own little droplet and cannot spread through the fat surrounding it).

This is what I use. Make a batch, keep in the fridge. It will start crystallizing after a couple weeks. You can up the glucose and lower the sucrose to combat it if you'd like.

Dark Chocolate Syrup
Makes 2 cups
250g Water
250g Sugar
100g Dark, Dutch Cocoa
¼t Kosher Salt
1t Vanilla
Combine all; bring to a boil while stirring almost constantly. As soon as it comes to a
boil, pour into a container and put a lid on it to prevent further evaporation.
Refrigerate.

Thank you. Very useful. Do you froth with the milk or do you add after you've prepared the milk?

I froth it with the milk. I don't have to dirty a spoon then .

What did you mean by up the glucose and lower the sucrose. Just lower the amount of sugar added?

Glucose helps prevent crystallization. I should have said, switch out some of the sucrose(sugar) for glucose. Glucose is expensive at the retail level, so for my home recipe, I don't use it.

You will lose sweetness with glucose. You have to increase the quantity if you want to maintain sweetness.

About 60% of the sweetness of sucrose.

Ingredients and recipes for the Ghiradelli: