A Somewhat Expensive Science Experiment

Let me save you some trouble.  This milk chocolate bar recipe  was a total disaster.  This guy isn’t the only one sharing this recipe, it’s on many youtube channels and blogs. But when science disproves recipes, you know the author is doing something seriously wrong.

I should have done research and read the comments about grainy texture before starting. When I went back to watch the video, I noticed the gritty substance in the bowl and on his spatula.  Just like mine looked.

Same with the others videos.  But I didn’t notice this at first.  I was super excited about saving money by making my own compound chocolate. Especially since I had all the ingredients on hand. Imagining tons of chocolate sweets in my future, I didn’t do proper research.

Why Science Matters in the Kitchen (and life!)

I gathered my supplies and away we started! Carefully weighing the crisco, powdered milk, cocoa and powdered sugar.  And I sifted.

Over a bain-marie, I melted the shortening. And I added the ingredients a bit at a time.  I stirred and I stirred and stirred, waiting for the ingredients to dissolve like promised.

Then I pushed the temperature up to boiling and it still wouldn’t dissolve!  This went on for over an hour before I decided to call it quits.  I poured it into a pan and it actually hardened.

Sort of.  It was more like a thin sheet of brownies. He shows the bar “snapping at the end” and if you look closely, you can see the grainy texture in his “bar” as well as mine.  In the fridge, it indeed became hard and would snap nicely.  Giving up, I scraped it into a bowl, looked at another recipe and decided to try that one. 

This one needed more crisco.  Maybe that was my issue?  Wrong.  It was worse than the first one!

One more.  This time I’m going to make “white chocolate.”  Basically the same concept, but without the cocoa powder and this time butter. It had to work, right? No.  I think I just made a really oily sweet roux…  Somedays, you just have to walk away from the kitchen.

A Brief Science Lesson

So why did this happen?  Is it something you did?  Not always.  Sometimes it’s a bad recipe.  In this case, It’s science.  You cannot dissolve sugar in oil. 

This is a basic lesson apparently that both the authors of these homemade chocolates and I either never learned or long forgotten.  It’s the same principle as oil and water not mixing. 

Only, you can get an emulsion out of oil and water and end up with something edible like lemonade cake.  These recipes make you sad if you actually enjoy chocolate.  Sugar and oil are non-polar and repeal each other on a molecular level.  So no matter what you do at home, you’ll never get anywhere with these recipes.  They will be always be grainy.  The taste wasn’t terrible, oddly enough. 

Perhaps that is why many of these home bakers are happy with the results despite a super unpleasant texture.  Hope I just saved you a few hours of time and about $10 worth of ingredients.  And don’t give up on days like this.  It’s not always something you did.  Sometimes the recipe just isn’t right. When science disproves recipes, it’s not your fault. Unless you are purposely sharing it with others and claiming it’s fantastic for the sake of revenue. Then you are costing people time and money. And that’s going to eventually cost you the same.

In the meantime, if you are looking for a good chocolate bar, I suggest you go shopping. These cocoa recipes are horrific.