Janet Barwick wrote:
Hi Jemma - I made your chocolate and, as promised, it turned out beautifully. Initially, I made a small amount and just used the syrup of the melted down glucose powder (with no water added). I also had no lecithin for the first batch. But the syrup was obviously too thick as it formed a clumpy, sticky mass in the bottom of the bowl and the end result was unusable. I followed your recipe precicely the second time (and included the lecithin) and I couldn't believe how easy it was an how smooth and well the chocolate set - the whole thing was done in under 15 minutes.
Re: the taste - I felt it leaned too heavily toward the cocoa butter for me so I re-melted it and basically swapped the quantities of cocoa butter and cacao (I think it was roughly 1/4 cocoa butter and 3/4 cacao in the end) and this was much more to my taste. My husband taste tested and approved it as well so I'll persist and add some toasted nuts to the next batch.
Thanks once again for your research and post.
That's fantastic Janet, I'm glad it worked for you. I've been meaning to update the post because I've since experimented further. Once I tried using store-bought glucose syrup in place of the syrup I made for the initial recipe- this was a complete failure- the store bought glucose syrup just clumped at the bottom just like your experience. I've also tried once without the lecithin and this worked fine. To be honest, I think I'll leave out the lecithin from now on in this recipe. I think since the dextrose syrup is so light (and you need so little of it compared to the ratios of butter and cacao), it mixes ok with the other ingredients and the lecithin doesn't necessarily help with this- good news because it simplifies it.
That's a good idea to play with the quantities of cocoa butter vs cacao- actually I might do the same next time. And I'm definitely adding nuts- yum!
I've also tried a milk chocolate version using milk powder but it was a complete failure so I'll keep experimenting and post a new recipe if I ever succeed!
