Special Milk Chocolate

Recipe:

22 ounces of cacao beans (from our own farm, of course)
22 ounces of cacao butter (some of which I press from my beans)
2 ounces of ghee (Keli makes that)
12 ounces of whole milk powder
32 ounces of evaporated cane sugar



11:30 PM, Thursday night...

Tonight we’re making milk chocolate.  I think the chocolate devas have some inside influence about making chocolate at night because for as long as we’ve been making chocolate we have always ended up staying up late to do it even though we talk about timing it so we can get to bed at a reasonable time.

Jim is in the middle of pouring the sugar now.  This time we used “Rapunzel” which has a special technique for dehydrating it, according to their packaging, and it has all the nutrients from the sugar cane still in it.  He put it in the oven to make sure it was dry and it’s smelling a little like caramel.  It looks like we are going to be using three different kinds of fat, our own cacao butter, the de-oderized cacao butter we buy, and freshly made ghee, yes the recipe actually called for clarified butter.

This batch we will keep simple, just the milk chocolate and roasted hazel nuts.  In good conscience I have to disclose that the recipe for milk chocolate is a lot more fat added than dark chocolate, so it’s a good thing we’re using healthy fats. I also read that if you have a tendency for heart burn it’s best to avoid milk chocolate products, otherwise you can enjoy what we hope will be some of the best milk chocolate in the world.

But wait - Jim just came in; I’m hearing that this turned out to be our biggest batch which could be dangerous because we are using our old machine which used to get stuck under even the slightest stress. 

There are a lot of variables and the whole night has to pass as the grinding wheels turn.  If it comes out good I’ll be bringing it into work tomorrow.

Note: Now it is Friday afternoon, all the chocolate is in the molds and it is looking extemely good!