Food Experiment: chocolate milk from scratch.

gee

Finally a new goddamn title
Sep 29, 2012
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This was 100% an experiment to see if I can incompetently pull something off. I didn't look up anything other than how to roast cocoa nibs, and came up with something that's actually kinda good.

Ingredients:

about a dozen cocoa nibs
2tb heavy cream
1c milk
1 tbsp sugar

First thing you'll need to do is get cocoa nibs. A friend of mine brings in large quantities of 'superfoods' from foreign countries and sells them to hippie/granola-whore stores, and gave me a small bag of them to try out. If you're looking for them, uh, check a hippie/granola-whore store.

Set your toaster oven (or real oven) to 300F, put the nibs on a sheet/piece of foil/whatever and put them in there for about 15 minutes. When they crack, they're done. The house smells fucking awesome when you do this, I should add.

While they're still hot, smash them and grind them with a mortar/pestle. I ground them to a ground coffee sort of consistency. You want to do this before they cool down, because cocoa nibs contain cocoa butter (unsweetened white chocolate, basically) which will harden as it cools down, making the job harder.

Raw nibs are in the foreground, ground nibs (aka 'cocoa mass') from the mortar/pestle are in the background.

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At this point, I thought what should I do... this mashed cocoa stuff smells awesome, I can't really eat it directly, but I can probably extract some flavor from it. Flavors are oils, to extract them I could use alcohol (making creme de cacao), oil/fat (something to ponder for the future, for baking) or borrowing an ice cream making trick, using cream to extract the flavor. So into a small pot went the ground nibs and a couple tablespoons of cream.

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After simmering for several minutes, things started to look, and smell, pretty damn awesome.

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Now that the chocolately goodness is extracted into the cream, I added 1/4c milk to dilute the cream. This makes everything liquid, making straining it possible.

The cocoa clumped up when I added the cold milk, probably due to the cocoa butter solidifying. So I heated it for another while to get everything melted again.

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Next step, strain it. I used a fine mesh metal strainer, cloth would get rid of more cocoa dust and make for a better texture in the final product, but refinements can come some other time if the outcome doesn't suck.

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I added more milk to top up the glass. First taste? hey, pretty good, it just needs sweet. In went some organic tree-hugging hippie free trade coconut palm sugar that's been hiding in my cupboard for a while and needed to get used up, to bring the sweetness more in line with normal chocolate milk.

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Bam. Homemade chocolate milk!
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Outcome = success. It's actually kinda good, it's got a sharp intense flavor - this could be the result of my using way more cocoa nibs than I needed to, or it could be because I made this with plain cocoa versus dutch cocoa.
 
Why on earth would you go through all of this for chocolate milk? Just get chocolate powder or syrup and mix it with milk.
 
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Because people enjoy cooking and experimenting to learn new techniques.
I looooove cooking and experiencing to learn new things :heart:
This to ME, looks like too much work ... Perhaps cuz I don't drink milk.

Remember when I exp and learnt myself to make tabbouleh ???
I loved it and now I know but I won't do it again

But I hear you kitten !

Good job @gee for the patience and dedication
 
Because people enjoy cooking and experimenting to learn new techniques.

This is like learning a new way to pour oil into your car. It's just not needed. I can understand trying new things, just where it makes sense.

How about making a new chocolate bar that doesn't already exist? I dunno.
 
This is like learning a new way to pour oil into your car. It's just not needed. I can understand trying new things, just where it makes sense.

How about making a new chocolate bar that doesn't already exist? I dunno.

Can you improve the way your car runs by how you change your oil?
Can you make a better tasting or healthier chocolate milk?
 
I love to cook but even this seems too much for me. I'd rather make my own syrup than go through this, but hey to each their own. Then again I don't drink chocolate milk much. I'd rather just have hot chocolate.
 
Why on earth would you go through all of this for chocolate milk? Just get chocolate powder or syrup and mix it with milk.
Same reason april/fly make their own beer, and jehannum works on his own cars - because it's fun, and when you're done you can say "I made that." Cooking is one of my hobbies, I've never done anything with cocoa nibs before, and didn't have much else productive to be at on a sunday night.

Also, making this was easy! 15 minutes roasting nibs in the toaster oven, 5 minutes cracking the nibs in the mortar/pestle, and less than 10 minutes cooking stuff on the stovetop. It was less effort than making a batch of cookies.
 
Same reason april/fly make their own beer, and jehannum works on his own cars - because it's fun, and when you're done you can say "I made that." Cooking is one of my hobbies, I've never done anything with cocoa nibs before, and didn't have much else productive to be at on a sunday night.

Also, making this was easy! 15 minutes roasting nibs in the toaster oven, 5 minutes cracking the nibs in the mortar/pestle, and less than 10 minutes cooking stuff on the stovetop. It was less effort than making a batch of cookies.
And it probably tastes much better than store bought syrup.
 
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Wouldn't say better, it tastes different (natural vs dutch process) from typical syrup, and I didn't strain it well so the texture was a bit chalky, but it was pretty good.

Definitely gonna try some other things, still got a couple pounds of nibs left.
 
And it probably tastes much better than store bought syrup.

theres no way to say this without sounding incredibly snobbish, but once you start making your own stuff, you ruin stuff elsewhere for yourself. Most restaurants (note: i dont go to 5 star restaurants) taste like crap to me now, i can do better at home almost universally.
 
Same reason april/fly make their own beer, and jehannum works on his own cars - because it's fun, and when you're done you can say "I made that." Cooking is one of my hobbies, I've never done anything with cocoa nibs before, and didn't have much else productive to be at on a sunday night.

Also, making this was easy! 15 minutes roasting nibs in the toaster oven, 5 minutes cracking the nibs in the mortar/pestle, and less than 10 minutes cooking stuff on the stovetop. It was less effort than making a batch of cookies.
Yeah I still don't see this equating to beer making or working on a car. It's chocolate milk.
 
theres no way to say this without sounding incredibly snobbish, but once you start making your own stuff, you ruin stuff elsewhere for yourself. Most restaurants (note: i dont go to 5 star restaurants) taste like crap to me now, i can do better at home almost universally.
This is true. May be partly because it is appreciated more when you yourself put the work into it and also part because the ingredients used are usually better than what a restaurant will offer.

I analyze restaurant food now because of this... I could improve this dish if I add this or do this differently.
 
theres no way to say this without sounding incredibly snobbish, but once you start making your own stuff, you ruin stuff elsewhere for yourself. Most restaurants (note: i dont go to 5 star restaurants) taste like crap to me now, i can do better at home almost universally.
You're better than all restaurants? Why don't you start a restaurant?