Printfresh cocoa beans
i just bought some fresh cocoa beans in the market, but i don't know what to do with them!
i researched on how to make chocolate bars from fresh cocoa beans, but the process is really confusing and i don't have a lot of the equipment needed.
so what else can i do with fresh cocoa beans?
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6 Comments:
Is it raw cocoa beans that you purchased or instead are they cocoa "nibs"? the nibs are small broken pieces of beans that were already washed and roasted. If you have nibs there are many optionsfor incorporating them into candies. cookies or many other types of desserts. If instead you have the raw beans then it's a bit like having green coffee beans - there's nothing you can do with them until they're roasted.
phaelon56 at 11:58AM on 05/07/08
it's raw whole cocoa beans - straight from the pod.
mochateri at 7:39PM on 05/07/08
@phaelon56 :after i roast them, can i just crush them and use it as cocoa powder?
mochateri at 7:40PM on 05/07/08
No. In order to use it as cocoa powder, it has to be "pressed" to form a cocoa cake. The pressing removes cocoa butter and leaves the cake with varying percentages of cocoa butter as well as the "cocoa cake" which then has to be ground into powder form. Just crushing the cocoa bean, or nibs, will result in making a chocolate liquor paste which requires further processing in order to become cocoa, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, etc.
Boscompb at 11:17PM on 05/07/08
You can certainly haver some fun with them. If you have access to an old hot air popcorn popper such as the original West Bend Poppery and you can do it outside or near a window it's easy to roast the beans. Folks who roast green coffee beans at home this way go both by bean color and by the sound of cracking during a certain transformation process so they know when to stop the roast (called "first crack" and "second crack" stages).
I'm not sure what the target temps or metrics are for knowing when cocoa beans are roasted to the right level. If you don't have a hot air popper you can instead rely on conductive heat (rather than convective) and roast them on a cookie sheet in the oven with frequent agitation or even in a cast iron skillet on stove top. And some folks swear by "dog bowl heat gun" roasting (done outdoors using a large stainless steel pet food bowl, a pair of gloves and a heat gun).
You could then crunch the roasted beans with a mortar and pestle to get cocoa nibs of a sort. I went to the chocolate show in NYC late last year and some vendors had incorporated cocoa nibs into various chocolate confections - gave them a nice crunch and flavor burst.
phaelon56 at 9:59AM on 05/08/08
@Boscompb: how do i "press" it?
@phaelon56: thanx a lot for that cocoa nib in chocolate idea!
mochateri at 12:24AM on 05/09/08