I've made chocolate at home a few times. But regarding copha, it's a very common question actually and over on the free forum someone has also posted the question, this is what I originally said.
did a bit of a search and this is what David said about Copha on Facebook
| Quote: |
| Copha is coconut oil that has been hydrogenated to make it solid at higher temps. Coconut oil is almost all saurated to being with so only a ver small percentage would be hydogenated - that being said, it will contain some trans-fats (which is not great) - maybe cocoa butter is an alternative? |
I also found this on wikipedia
| Quote: |
| If hydrogenation is taken to completion (i.e., the oil is "fully hydrogenated"), there are no trans fats remaining. There are no natural cis-fats either. Only partial hydrogenation produces trans fats. |
Regarding making chocolate itself, your supposed to use cocoa beans (which are very hard to find but you can get them online), and you use different processed to get the chocolate liquor (it's the chocolate liquid extracted from the bean). There is a further process, which extracts the cocoa butter and you also then get cocoa powder. Sooooo.... to make a basic home made chocolate you want to buy some cocoa butter, add cocoa powder, dextrose, any flavours (vanilla essence, or nuts), and milk powder (i've found my chocolate to go lumpy if I add milk powder so I just leave it out and have it as dark chocolate). Just melt the cocoa butter and slowly add the other ingredients. I found raw organic cocoa butter in one of my local health food shops and 500g is about $30. There is heaps of places online to purchase it, even ebay, otherwise you can try yellow pages and ring your local healthfood shops.
