Rosen Trevithick - Chocolate Making Adventures: Create Your Own Chocolate

• Customise chocolate to match your personal taste
• Stronger, richer flavours than commercially available chocolate
• Make your guests delicious treats
• Make free-from chocolate for vegans, allergy sufferers and people on low-sugar diets
• Fill your kitchen with a luscious, molten-chocolate aroma
• Never be without a gift idea again
• Enjoy the satisfaction of being able to create the object of one of humanitys greatest obsessions
• Produce chocolate at will from your baking cupboard
• Enjoy the antioxidant, mineral-rich properties of the cocoa bean
• Be at the forefront of the inevitable homemade-chocolate-making craze
• Add chocolatier to your rsum

Note from Rosen

I want you to enjoy the best possible chocolate-making experience.
If you have any questions, please contact me at rosen.trevithick@gmail.com

Create Your Own Chocolate

Rosen Trevithick

Photography by

Claire Wilson

Live Life Explore

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The memory of finding out that I could make chocolate on my kitchen stove is vivid. I was at a small social gathering when my friend Claire told me the news that would change my life forever.

"You mean I can press a few ingredients together and make a chocolate substitute?"

"No, you can make actual chocolate."

I spent the next five minutes checking that my ears were not deceiving me.

Being a chocoholic, I had looked up making chocolate many times, but had always been led to believe that it was impossible without complex machinery. However, times have changed and the key ingredient cocoa butter is readily available online, opening the door to endless possibilities.

I immediately ordered a tub of cocoa butter to mix with the cocoa powder and honey I already had. It really was that simple three ingredients.

As soon as my cocoa butter arrived, I got to work improvising a recipe. I melted the cocoa butter then stirred in cocoa powder and honey until I reached a flavour that made my taste buds explode. Then I poured it into moulds and waited.

After one agonising hour, the chocolate was ready to eat. And oh my goodness it was the best thing I had ever tasted. Sweet, rich, dark and full of flavour just divine.

It wasnt long before I wanted to branch out. Could I make milk and white chocolate too?

I quickly met a stumbling block its difficult to get milk into homemade chocolate. The slightest drop of moisture causes the mixture to seize; it becomes a thick treacle that is impossible to work with. Online recipes suggested using powdered milk. However, I found that milk powder made the mixture gritty. Often, my mixture would separate out, leaving a horrible, tasteless mess.

Six months, five types of milk, one food mixer, one coffee grinder, a big hunk of granite, a terrifyingly sharp scraper and many ruined slabs of chocolate later, I arrived at a milk chocolate that was both smooth and tasty. And the best news: I found it painless to replicate.

White chocolate was even more challenging, but after much trial and error, I managed to create a recipe that was every bit as sweet and creamy as the white chocolate I have grown up loving.

I wanted to share my discoveries nobody should have to waste one slab of chocolate, let alone six months worth. And so I decided to write a recipe book.

Coincidentally, Claire was beginning a career in food photography. As the person who inadvertently kick-started my chocolate-making journey, it seemed perfectly fitting for her to take the role of photographer.

In addition to many recipes for pure chocolate, Ive packed this book with ideas on how to flavour, present and embellish it.

I recommend starting with Plain and Simple Dark Chocolate () to get to grips with chocolate making. Once youve mastered that, move on to some of the more complex varieties.

Best of luck with your chocolate-making adventures.

Rosen

Cocoa butter can relate to two things: the pure, pale yellow, edible fat extracted from cocoa beans, or a skin cream derived from it. Naturally, its very important to purchase the edible sort, as these are definitely not interchangeable. Some people refer to the edible cocoa butter as cacao butter, but its essentially the same thing.

You need to buy cocoa butter, as you cant make it at home without complex machinery.

Cocoa butter is made from cocoa nibs, the brown bits found inside cocoa beans. Its extracted, leaving cocoa solids, which are also used in chocolate making.

Edible cocoa butter is usually sold raw. Controversially, heat is often used in the process of extracting cocoa butter. However, dont get bogged down in debates like How raw is raw? because my recipes will involve raising the temperature to over 45C anyway.

Cocoa butter is solid at room temperature and takes a while to melt, so I recommend buying it in button or medallion form.

Cocoa butter can be very expensive unless you buy in bulk (bags of 1kg or more). Even so, I recommend buying a small tub or bag to begin with, and progressing to a larger bag once youve got a taste for chocolate making. Alternatively, form a chocolate syndicate with friends.

Cocoa butter has a strong flavour, which can overpower other ingredients, such as milk. In order to make delicious white chocolate, you will need to select deodorised cocoa butter. Be aware that this lacks the nutritional value of unprocessed cocoa butter.

Cocoa powder is made from grinding the solids that remain after cocoa butter has been extracted from the nibs.

I use roasted cocoa powder. You can buy raw powder but I found it less flavoursome than its roasted counterpart. I ended up using it for face masks rather than cooking.

As with choosing cocoa butter, bear in mind that my recipes involve temperatures up to 45C, which exceeds standards on what can be considered raw.

Watch out for additives when you buy roasted cocoa powder. Some supermarkets like to lace theirs with unnecessary extras.

Also known as cocoa paste, cocoa liquor is a product made from ground cocoa nibs that have been separated from their shells. Usually cocoa liquor is separated into cocoa solids and cocoa butter, but you can buy the liquor itself. It makes delicious, rich and smooth chocolate.

Cocoa liquor tends to be bitter. Some kinds have a smoky taste. However, you only need to add a little sweetener and additional cocoa butter to turn it into dark chocolate.

Most of my recipes use cocoa powder instead of cocoa liquor, but if you want to make chocolate from scratch, youll need to work with liquor.

Although the name suggests that this product resembles a paste or liquor, at room temperature its actually the texture of plain chocolate solid.

Dozens of different sweeteners can be used for making chocolate. You may wish to find a sweetener of your own. It depends on your priorities: taste, texture or particular health benefits.

This is the sweetener I use in most of my chocolate, because it adds depth of flavour as well as sweetness.