Hello all.
I've been experimenting with chocolate. I had the idea to use coconut oil since it seems have the kind of consistency you want in chocolate. I developed this recipe with keeping it cold in mind, but it could be an amazing sauce if it stays soft at room temperature (admittedly I don't know yet!).
At first I had major problems because I was simply melting the xylitol with heat and no water, as I was afraid the water would make the chocolate too soft. Normally, xylitol take hours to harden after melting. But to my great surprise I discovered that if you add enough oil to it, it hardens almost instantly into a rock! I created many rocks this way. I think this could be useful to create crunchy toppings and hard "candies".
I've ended up with this recipe. After realizing there was no way to mix melted xylitol and oil without the xylitol crystallizing into a powder or hardening into a large rock, I decided to try and find the smallest amount of water I could add that would fully dissolve the xylitol without it crystallizing later. I began from the outset to dissolve the xylitol in the water using heat, because it is very slow otherwise.
When I had discovered how much water was necessary to dissolve the xylitol, I found that it tended to crystallize to the dish and give the chocolate a powdery texture. It seems the chocolate also causes the xylitol to crystallize. At this point I began reducing the xylitol rather than using more water, because I was worried the water was softening the chocolate.
I discovered that when your xylitol has the tendency to crystallize, it doesn't sweeten the chocolate very well. So after you've added enough xylitol to crystallize, adding more xylitol doesn't make it much sweeter unless you like chewing the xylitol crystals. That's perfect really because that's too sweet anyways.
Eventually I came to this. Before it hardens, it is luxuriously creamy and tasteful. After it hardens, it's still amazingly good and turns creamy again in your mouth. I was very surprised.
I have been adjusting this using very small serving sizes so far in small sauce cups. I'll call this one serving size for now. I am using American measures (not all tablespoons are the same).
1TBSP Xylitol
1+1/2 TSP Water
1 TBSP + 2 TSP Coconut oil (preferably cold)
3TBSP Powdered Cocoa
Throw Xylitol, water and coconut oil into a very small cup. Microwave for 50 seconds, ONLY until xylitol is well-dissolved (water will boil). Put a stiff card over the cup so oil doesn't make a mess. Add cocoa, set it in a cold water or ice bath and whisk (I use a fork) only until mildly creamy (it will get chunky if you go too far, that's all). Then harden in the freezer for at least 20 minutes. You can skip hardening if you want to use it as a topping or sauce.
I haven't tried making larger portions yet, but the stuff seems so well-behaved that I think it would work great.
If I had tallow, I would try this at least once to see if it went well. Maybe I'll have tallow in a month.
I've been experimenting with chocolate. I had the idea to use coconut oil since it seems have the kind of consistency you want in chocolate. I developed this recipe with keeping it cold in mind, but it could be an amazing sauce if it stays soft at room temperature (admittedly I don't know yet!).
At first I had major problems because I was simply melting the xylitol with heat and no water, as I was afraid the water would make the chocolate too soft. Normally, xylitol take hours to harden after melting. But to my great surprise I discovered that if you add enough oil to it, it hardens almost instantly into a rock! I created many rocks this way. I think this could be useful to create crunchy toppings and hard "candies".
I've ended up with this recipe. After realizing there was no way to mix melted xylitol and oil without the xylitol crystallizing into a powder or hardening into a large rock, I decided to try and find the smallest amount of water I could add that would fully dissolve the xylitol without it crystallizing later. I began from the outset to dissolve the xylitol in the water using heat, because it is very slow otherwise.
When I had discovered how much water was necessary to dissolve the xylitol, I found that it tended to crystallize to the dish and give the chocolate a powdery texture. It seems the chocolate also causes the xylitol to crystallize. At this point I began reducing the xylitol rather than using more water, because I was worried the water was softening the chocolate.
I discovered that when your xylitol has the tendency to crystallize, it doesn't sweeten the chocolate very well. So after you've added enough xylitol to crystallize, adding more xylitol doesn't make it much sweeter unless you like chewing the xylitol crystals. That's perfect really because that's too sweet anyways.
Eventually I came to this. Before it hardens, it is luxuriously creamy and tasteful. After it hardens, it's still amazingly good and turns creamy again in your mouth. I was very surprised.
I have been adjusting this using very small serving sizes so far in small sauce cups. I'll call this one serving size for now. I am using American measures (not all tablespoons are the same).
1TBSP Xylitol
1+1/2 TSP Water
1 TBSP + 2 TSP Coconut oil (preferably cold)
3TBSP Powdered Cocoa
Throw Xylitol, water and coconut oil into a very small cup. Microwave for 50 seconds, ONLY until xylitol is well-dissolved (water will boil). Put a stiff card over the cup so oil doesn't make a mess. Add cocoa, set it in a cold water or ice bath and whisk (I use a fork) only until mildly creamy (it will get chunky if you go too far, that's all). Then harden in the freezer for at least 20 minutes. You can skip hardening if you want to use it as a topping or sauce.
I haven't tried making larger portions yet, but the stuff seems so well-behaved that I think it would work great.
If I had tallow, I would try this at least once to see if it went well. Maybe I'll have tallow in a month.