CHOCOLATE
Chocolate is not only a Valentine’s day staple but also a well-loved dessert by humans of all ages.
1. What is Chocolate?
Chocolate = Cocoa butter (extracted from the fruits of the Theobroma Cacao plant) + sugar + milk fat
Cocoa butter = a triglyceride that has three arms including palmitic acid (saturated fatty acid) , stearic acid (saturated fatty acid) and oleic acid (unsaturated fatty acid).
2. Why does the consumption of chocolate make us feel good?
The main active ingredient found in cocoa is theobromine, similar to caffeine! Theobromine increases alertness and sharpness in mind and functions as a vasodilator. A vasodilator is a chemical that allows blood vessels to relax and facilitate movement of the blood, which arouses the brain and eases the heart.
However, too much of a good thing can be bad for you as well. By ingesting too much chocolate, there will be a large amount of theobromine ingested as well, which could result in nausea, anxiety and headaches.
3. What are the crystalline phases of chocolate?
Phase I – melting point at 18 degrees;
Phase II – melting point at 22 degrees;
Phase III – melting point at 26 degrees;
Phase IV – melting point at 29 degrees;
Phase V – melting point at 34 degrees; minimal phase for chocolate
Phase VI – melting point at 36 degrees; Best for chocolate!
4. Tempering process
Honestly, my favourite part about the whole process of making chocolate because watching people tempering chocolate is actually pretty therapeutic.
Why temper chocolate? This is a process of heating, cooling and then heating the chocolate mixture again which forces crystals to crystallise in the correct form ensure that the texture, sheen and snap of the chocolate will be perfect. Chocolate is tempered to ensure that the minimum of Phase V is reached where chocolate doesn’t melt in your hands but melts in the mouth.
The optimal way to achieve chocolate with a fifth crystalline form would be by cooling part of a dark chocolate mixture on a cold marble slab, the chocolate cools down homogeneously to around 28 degrees Celsius. This is then mixed back with the original mixture at 45 to 50 degrees Celsius and ensuring a general mixture with a temperature of 30 – 31 degrees Celsius.
Tempering temperatures will be lower for milk chocolate and lowest for white chocolate.
Fun fact!
There’s a whole wide cost range of chocolate and more often that not, the cost is also indicative of the quality of the chocolate. Remember that gold coin chocolate you received from your kindergarten teacher which tasted like plastic? It turns out that mass manufacturers of cheaper chocolate substitute cocoa butter with vegetable oil/ PGPR – an emulsifier that reduces viscosity, thereby enhancing flow properties in chocolate production. The replacement of the cocoa butter, the primary ingredient in chocolate, results in a very different and non-chocolate tasting “chocolate”. Not only that, the health benefits that chocolate brings are only applicable when there’s actual cocoa butter in your chocolate since that is the source of theobromine. By substituting cocoa butter with vegetable oil/ PGPR, the chocolate you get from mass manufacturers is not only of inferior quality and also doesn’t provide the necessary health benefits of good chocolate. There’s really no harm in paying slightly more for good chocolate, besides a slightly bigger hole in your wallet, if you want to protect your own health.
I SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM
1. What is ice cream?
Ice cream is a frozen emulsion of
- Ice crystals – form the body of ice cream and how big the ice crystals are affects the smoothness of the ice cream. (The faster you freeze ice cream, the smaller the ice crystals will be.)
- Fats – improves the density, flavour and also contributes to the smoothness of texture.
- Sweeteners – not only added for flavour but also added to lower the freezing point such that ice cream is at a cream state and not an ice block
- Air – included to provide consistency and volume in the ice cream
- Non-fat milk solids and flavourings – contributes to the body, texture and smoothness which prevents the formation of unwanted, large ice crystals in the ice cream
The emulsion is aided by emulsifiers, which are ingredients that help the other “unwilling” ingredients to combine and can be obtained from simple ingredients such as the egg yolk. Stabilisers, such as gelatin, are also added to reduce the melting time of the ice cream.
Fun Fact!
More expensive ice creams tend to contain more fat and less infused air, which increases the density and flavour of the ice cream. However, cheaper mass-produced ice creams, tend to include less fat, more stabilisers and up to 100 % infused air, which results in a fluffy texture.
2. How do you freeze ice cream?
By using the scientific concept of freezing point-depression which is a process of artificially reducing the freezing point of ice by mixing ice and salt. The freezing point of ice is lowered and ice becomes even colder than usual. The lower temperature is required for the extra energy to stop the solute from moving around. This ice-salt combination is then used to freeze your ice cream liquid mixture into a solid form!
3. Dry ice ice cream?
Since my group was unable to create our chocolate mousse the other day, we decided to try making it into ice cream/ freeze it with dry ice which seemed to work for a while but eventually did not because our mousse was lacking the necessary basic ingredients for the liquid ice cream base. However, I continued to wonder if it was possible to actually make ice cream (actual creamy ice cream and not sorbet/gelato style) with dry ice. Turns out that is a possibility, and you can even find recipes online about it!
4. Sorbet, gelato, soft serve etc.: What’s the difference?
As I was researching, it turns out that the main differences between all the types of “ice cream” out there were the fat content and amount of air incorporated as seen below:
