a lesson on chocolate spreads. admit it, it's what we're really here for
the queen of lay it on thick has a few things to say, plus instructions
In big businesslandia they like to say, Vision without execution is just hallucination.
But we also need to dwell, at least a bit, in the thinking-before-doing zone, where we daydream, plan, mull, roll the next batch idea to see what’s on the other side. If we’re paying attention we might even be face to face with the truth behind why we’re here making these chocolate messes in the first place, because there’s always more to making chocolate than the steps of the process. Maya Angelou said it like this:
Food served is always more than just food served.
Angelou, besides being a renowned poet, writer, activist, and professor (one withering look from her made this Lit major wanna-be poet girl question everything she thought she knew), was also a cook and cookbook author. She understood, despite her “serious” writing and the acclaim attached to it, she wouldn’t necessarily be taken seriously in the food world. And, because she was penning a cookbook, that same literary world could very well see the endeavor as less serious, therefore less important.
But Angelou believed writing was giving voice. And that if you are going to write—give voice—it better be the truth. And because her cooking wasn’t separate from her truth, her memory, but was a way to stir what she knew into the bright light of community, fear of rejection was outweighed by fear of not giving voice; in her words, Not doing enough.
The beauty of doing enough is that it doesn’t require a batch number. Or, scale. It doesn’t mean big or biggest. It just means enough, by our own standard. You know, the one we can live (with ourselves) by. This points to what is becoming more important than it’s ever been, not just in the world, the chocolate crafting community, our home communities, but within ourselves: tell me when truth doesn’t go hand in hand with hard work?
Hard work, the personal compass of doing enough—is the part that comes after the mulling over and thinking and wondering. It’s the answer we give to why we’re here in the first place.
Maya Angelou’s most important lesson to all of us working in food craft chocolate might be when she reminded us that in cooking, Food served IS always more than just food served, saying,
“I feel cooking is a natural extension to my autobiography. In fiction, the story can be moulded to the author’s needs but in autobiography you have to tell the truth.”
File this under How we Speak our Truth Through Chocolate, because
Chocolate is always more than just chocolate, and craft chocolate is definitely more than just chocolate. Slow chocolate IS more than just small batch.
For me, this has been making the things I craved and couldn’t find, the combinations that made sense as “food,” though maybe less so as chocolate. It’s been eye-opening to realize a lot of what I’ve crafted has been too sweet for my palate.
Sweet has its purpose. Just as salt has its purpose, and bitterness, and sour, and fat, and umami. Baking with authentic chocolate is one way: a salted chocolate chunk sourdough cookie is divine; at least, when the chocolate is as intentional as the other ingredients. A black sesame ice cream swizzled with toasted bourbon white chocolate is a see-saw of nutty and warm in every melting bite.
But for me, spreads are where it really all comes together.
The thing to remember with chocolate spreads is that in reality the focus is on the nut or seed, with cacao bringing in (yes, chocolate) the bitter that sweet needs.
Essentially we’re making a nut or seed spread and then adding chocolate, not the other way around. Part of this is flavor, but the rest has to do with the fat: cocoa butter is a solid at room temperature, and our goal is (wait for it) to make something easy to s p r e a d, not something tidy and stiff, like a bar.
The fat in nuts and seeds is not solid at room temp. Sunflower oil, peanut, pecan, pistachio, almond, hazelnut oil, olive oil, walnut oil etc are all liquid at room temp: go figure! Coconut oil/butter is soft at room temp, and at warm room temp also becomes liquid.
Cocoa butter, unless your kitchen is super warm (so warm you wouldn’t store your beautifully tempered bars there), is solid/hard at room temperature, so however much cacao or chocolate is included in our recipe = how much cocoa fat will be there setting up and making us sad when the toast is ready but we can’t get the spoon into the jar.
To be spreadable, the cocoa fat can’t be the boss we want it to be when we’re moulding up bars. So, we disrupt it by adding additional fat, recalling that all other fats = cocoa butter crystal disruptors.
Some spreadcrafting advice:
use a higher % of seeds or nuts vs the cacao/chocolate.
add additional matching oil to the fat your seed/nuts bring into the batch as they’re ground into a paste. Like with cocoa nibs, as the melanger grinds (refines) the nuts or seeds, they release their inherent fat. But, as with cacao, they also contain solids, which = texture/substance. Adding more fat helps create a smooth texture as well as disrupts the cocoa butter crystals that form as it re-solidifies when the batch cools.
not a rule, but a personal pet peeve: if you’re making sesame spread, use sesame oil. If pistachio, pistachio oil, pecan spread then pecan oil, etc. Yes these can be $$. Intentional is the idea, and swapping in cheaper oil just to get the spread effect is called Nutella, and it’s at Target for way less than you’ll be charging.
however! If you dream up a walnut olive spread, sure, olive oil might be exactly the right ingredient along with ground walnuts, cacao, a small amount of sugar, and dry-brined olives (slathered on a baguette, please). The goal is not to replicate what’s already available but to make something no one else is making.
chocolate and nut/seed spreads need to be tempered. The cocoa butter will migrate, and appear as white-ish stuff on the top, and as we all know, when a jar is opened and the stuff inside is one color but the surface is coated in white people tend to scream eek mold!
if you’re new to food in jars read up and use best practices (sterilizing lids and jars, handling while filling, how high (and how high not) to fill.
lid bands (those skinny stickers affixed over the top and down the sides a bit) are a nice way to insure “not opened” upon arrival into the hands of your thrilled customers.
it’s okay to start with nut/seed butter rather than whole seeds, but a melanger works great for making a nut/seed paste. It’s okay to start with chocolate you have on hand; adjust sugar etc as needed.
origin: never found one I didn’t love in a spread. Nuts/seeds: Hazelnuts, almonds, pecans, pistachios, peanuts, macadamia, cashews, pine nuts, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, etc. Sweeteners: cane sugar, date, coconut sugar, maple sugar, panela, etc. Batchcrafting: grind with the same texture goals as for a bar, strain before tempering. Can be made + stored, melted and re-warmed before tempering.
starting points: yes you will need to play/experiment
60% nut/seed including added oil,
20% cocoa nib/added chocolate,
if using, 10% milk/or alt-milk,
10% sugar. Adjust sugar and added fat if using chocolate you’ve already made that you are simply refining into the nut/seed butter.
It all goes into the melanger, it all gets refined until lovely and smooth.
One notch down from big businesslandia is startuplandia, where they like to say that the best way to predict the future is to create it. Don’t see what you’re looking for? stop looking at Whateveryoneelsemakesville and get busy.
Down here, looking up from our nano-scale viewpoint I’d say, the best way to create the future is to get as close to our truth as we can.
Happy chocolate making,
Mackenzie
I couldn’t agree more Mackenzie...”if you’re making sesame spread, use sesame oil.”
Such an incredibly helpful post! I've recently been experimenting and have had two flops from hazelnuts being too darkly roasted. Who knew?!