Liquorice & Sea Salt 55%

Synopsis
Damson Chocolate’s famous liquorice flavoured dark milk chocolate bar with a hint of sea salt.
Author
Dom Ramsey / Damson Chocolate
Version
1.0
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Short URL
xtc.tc/104
Last Updated
29 October 2018

Ingredients

  • 43% Roasted cocoa nibs
  • 12% Cocoa butter
  • 14.6% Whole Milk Powder
  • 29% Cane Sugar
  • 0.8% Raw, fine organic liquorice powder
  • 0.2% Sea Salt
  • 0.4% Sunflower Lecithin

Technical Information

  • Roast: Standard (20 minutes @ 120°C)
  • Grind / Conch time:  Standard (24 hours for 3kg Premier grinders, 72 hours for 30kg CocoaTown melangers)

Method

  1. Sort and roast beans.
  2. After cooling, break and winnow.
  3. Slowly add nibs to heated melanger.
  4. Add pre-melted cocoa butter. This can be added in parallel with the cocoa nibs to help speed the process.
  5. When nibs and cocoa butter are flowing freely, slowly add the sugar. For larger batches, this can be done on the second day of the 72 hour grind.
  6. One the sugar has been combined, slowly add the milk powder.
  7. Add the liquorice powder and sea salt.
  8. Allow to grind / conch for prescribed time.
  9. One hour before the end of the cycle, add the lecithin.
  10. Pour into containers and allow to set.
  11. Temper as per the dark milk chocolate settings of your tempering machine.

Notes

We prefer to do flavoured batches in a small Premier-type melanger, as cleaning larger equipment can be time consuming. For reference, this is how the weights break down when making a small (2.8kg) batch:

  • 1.2kg Roasted cocoa nibs
  • 336g Cocoa butter
  • 410g Whole Milk Powder
  • 814g Cane Sugar
  • 25g Raw, fine organic liquorice powder
  • 5g Sea Salt
  • 11g Sunflower Lecithin

This recipe produces a carefully balanced flavour, designed to highlight both the chocolate and liquorice flavours. We find that the flavour of the liquorice builds as the chocolate melts, but is never overpowering. The sea salt is more of a flavour enhancer and should barely be detectable as a standalone flavour.

The choice of cocoa bean is up to you, however the Damson Chocolate version used a 50/50 blend of Madagascar Akesson Estate and Peru Gran Nativo Blanco from Cacaotales.

Tempering any high cocoa milk chocolate can take a little trial and error. We had success tempering this using the milk chocolate settings on our Chocovision tempering machine, but you may want to push your temperatures towards the dark chocolate range if you have problems.

For the liquorice powder, we use Lakrids by Johan Bulow Organic Liquorice Powder, along with Halon Mon Pure Anglesey Sea Salt. Obviously you can substitute other brands, but make sure the liquorice is the real thing and properly dried or you’ll introduce moisture into the chocolate.

We like to use Sunflower Lecithin in all our milk chocolates as it can significantly aid with viscosity and make moulding much easier. We use it in preference to Soy Lecithin which some people have allergies to. Again, if your chocolate flows readily you may want to omit this entirely and increase the cocoa nib or sugar content accordingly.

We find ageing the chocolate can have a significant beneficial effect on the final flavour of single origin chocolates, particularly those with high acidity. Normally this would be done after grinding and before tempering. Simply set the chocolate aside for 2-4 weeks before tempering and packaging.

License

Creative Commons Licence
Liqurice & Sea Salt Chocolate by XTC Chocolate is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://xtc.tc/104.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://xtcchocolate.com/licensing/.