Pure Cocoa Butter

mellokitty

Moderatrix of Journals
sorry i've been saving that one for someone special......

anyways, onto cocoa butter:

totally.
foreign.
beast.
to me.

i'm scared of it, it's like white kryptonite. totally different melting point, behaviour, stability, etc. etc.... i have no idea how to do the extraction, i have no idea what to do with it once i do. i'm a girl, my biological destiny is to *Eat the chocolate that the (mostly male) chocolatiers make. i'm afraid if i start fucking with that delicate balance of nature the sky will fall or something.
 

poplars

Well-Known Member
sorry i've been saving that one for someone special......

anyways, onto cocoa butter:

totally.
foreign.
beast.
to me.

i'm scared of it, it's like white kryptonite. i have no idea how to do the extraction, i have no idea what to do with it once i do. i'm a girl, my biological destiny is to *Eat the chocolate that the (mostly male) chocolatiers make. i'm afraid if i start fucking with that delicate balance of nature the sky will fall or something.

I think of it like this, if it has fat that can absorb cannabinoids that's all that need be known, other than temperatures at which consistency degrades.
 

taint

Well-Known Member
YAY! My wife says I'm special to.
I've never heard of cocoa being used I'm a fairly good cook ya got a link to the recipe?
 

poplars

Well-Known Member
yeah just take into consideration that if you get it too hot it might change the consistency.
 

mellokitty

Moderatrix of Journals
YAY!!..................................................My wife says I'm special to.

I've never heard of cocoa being used I'm a fairly good cook ya got a link to the recipe?
I WISH!! just groping around in the dark for now, trying to do some homework about the characteristics of cocoa for now.
it's very different - it looks exactly like white chocolate, but smells more like dark chocolate.

poplars, i'm thinking the same thing - fat = action.... but my friend the chocolatier apprentice says it's finicky because what i do to it now (ie. before the chocolate making starts and during) ) will affect the end product.it has to heat up and cool down not only to a specific temp but at a certain rate as well, or else it might be crumbly or brittle.... i KNOW i'm not gonna get it right the first time, but at $13/lb i just don't want to be hasty and fuck it up with some chocolate-noob mistake. (i also want to preserve as much of the aroma as possible, which is sometimes degraded by heating, it really is quite out-of-this-world).

that and he has no idea what the added extracted matter is going to do to the consistency either (i know cannabutter behaves differently than regular butter in subtle ways....)
 

mellokitty

Moderatrix of Journals
it's not buttery-soft-pliable AT ALL, it's more like ivory soap in consistency - kitty is quite kermuddled.
 

mellokitty

Moderatrix of Journals
for your viewing pleasure:
kitty's black forest brownie with cannachoc ganache: (this is just cheater-cannachoc made with melted truffles with cannabutter and cream)
001.jpg005.jpg
must've been the lighting; i couldn't get a decently expressive pic but between the 2 you get the gist.....
 

MsBBB

Active Member
BOOYAH just sourced pure food-grade organic cocoa butter and it's not going to cost me an arm and a leg, or my firstborn!
does anybody have any experience/pointers on cocoa butter extraction?
and what would YOU do with the end product?

also: the same supplier also carries blocks of stearic acid (a saturated fatty acid found in both coconut oil and cocoa butter in high concentrations) - has anybody used this before? it looks *solid at room temp, like a hard bar of soap, which suggests all sorts of confectionery uses to me....
I have not gotten into edibles yet, probably because I have not had a harvest, maybe someday. I do buy food grade cocoa butter and coconut oil. I am getting low on my coconut oil and have to find a new source. I use them both in skin care products. I whip my oils together and use them on my skin, I am always washing my hands and my whipped cream works really well and it only takes a small amount. I have not tried cooking with cocoa butter, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. I have cooked almost everything with coconut oil, it gives your food such a nice aroma.
 

mellokitty

Moderatrix of Journals
I have not gotten into edibles yet, probably because I have not had a harvest, maybe someday. I do buy food grade cocoa butter and coconut oil. I am getting low on my coconut oil and have to find a new source. I use them both in skin care products. I whip my oils together and use them on my skin, I am always washing my hands and my whipped cream works really well and it only takes a small amount. I have not tried cooking with cocoa butter, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. I have cooked almost everything with coconut oil, it gives your food such a nice aroma.
i think next time i make canna butter i'm going to use coconut oil instead. gotta appease the vegans - do *not *fuck with the vegans. lol.
you would think it was as serious as a life-threatening nut allergy or something. (i have a patient with a nut allergy too, it's not life threatening but serious enough to make me very very very careful. separate everything.)
i used to keep a big thing of coconut oil along with my grapeseed, i haven't bought one since the last one ran out, i should really go get a couple.
i was just thinking about what would happen with a half/half mixture with coco and cocoa the other day, it seems i would get a more ideal consistency that way. do you do 50/50 or is there a magic ratio?
 

MsBBB

Active Member
i think next time i make canna butter i'm going to use coconut oil instead. gotta appease the vegans - do *not *fuck with the vegans. lol.
you would think it was as serious as a life-threatening nut allergy or something. (i have a patient with a nut allergy too, it's not life threatening but serious enough to make me very very very careful. separate everything.)
i used to keep a big thing of coconut oil along with my grapeseed, i haven't bought one since the last one ran out, i should really go get a couple.
i was just thinking about what would happen with a half/half mixture with coco and cocoa the other day, it seems i would get a more ideal consistency that way. do you do 50/50 or is there a magic ratio?
Yeah, I know how vegans can be about their foods, which I try to understand.

I have not cooked with cocoa butter (yet), but I don't see why you couldn't mix the two together, half cocoa and half coconut. Mmmm, I might make a small batch of cookies tomorrow using some cocoa butter. Thanks for the idea. I also use grapeseed in my whipped butter, I pretty much throw in a little of whatever I have at the time.
 

poplars

Well-Known Member
two different consistencies, you'd have a gooey mess with chunks in it since the cocoa butter has a different consistency.

honestly it seems that cocoa butter isn't going to be worth it.

coconut oil, olive oil, butter etc. are the safe bets.
 

MsBBB

Active Member
two different consistencies, you'd have a gooey mess with chunks in it since the cocoa butter has a different consistency.

honestly it seems that cocoa butter isn't going to be worth it.

coconut oil, olive oil, butter etc. are the safe bets.
I whip them into a butter hand cream with no problem. Sure the hard cocoa butter has to be melted first, but with the heat from the melted cocoa butter everything else blends together rather well for my use. If using only melted cocoa butter, which is solid when cooled it might change the outcome of certain baked goods.
 

poplars

Well-Known Member
I whip them into a butter hand cream with no problem. Sure the hard cocoa butter has to be melted first, but with the heat from the melted cocoa butter everything else blends together rather well for my use. If using only melted cocoa butter, which is solid when cooled it might change the outcome of certain baked goods.

interesting the only problem left then is when its heated up if it'll change the consistency of teh cocoa butter or not.

either way it's definitely worth trying... try that whipping method then mix everything in and do the standard cannabutter method (maybe with a lil lower heat...)
 

mellokitty

Moderatrix of Journals
two different consistencies, you'd have a gooey mess with chunks in it since the cocoa butter has a different consistency.

honestly it seems that cocoa butter isn't going to be worth it.

coconut oil, olive oil, butter etc. are the safe bets.
my experience with mixing fats of different consistencies is that you end up with a product that's about halfway between the 2 - like when you mix a runny oil (grapeseed, olive, etc.) with coconut oil you get an oil that's kind of like left-out-butter/margarine. i would imagine that coconut oil (which is a buttery texture) and cocoa butter together would make something almost lotion-y at room temp, which, to a confectionary noob, is kind of ideal.

and you kinda need cocoa butter to make chocolate ;)... it's sort of a key ingredient lol. this all started when i got a 'nut-free' request (a lot of chocolate, esp. baking chocolate, is processed in nut-having plants).... the foodie in me was like, "well, if i make the chocolate from scratch there won't be any nuts in it" which of course led to "but if you mix butter into chocolate it'll change the texture" which in turn led to me sourcing the cocoa butter and ^^this^^ subsequent discussion. i just figured with the number of pot foodies out there it must have been done....
 

poplars

Well-Known Member
my standpoint is as long as the heat doesn't change the cocoa in a bad way and it blends the flavor of cannabis well it's good to go ;)
 

mykungfu

Member
Hey MelloKitty - I'm brand new to this forum and joined just so I can get in on this conversation...did you arrive at a solution with the cocoa butter? I've been researching the same problem myself. I've extracted using a pressure cooker and coconut OIL to really good effect and plan to do the same with cocoa BUTTER. Biggest issue is mixing the active product into the chocolate. I don't want to make a ganache - I want to make a final solid chocolate bar...concern is that the chocolate won't solidify after adding the additional cocoa butter...I suppose I can experiment with inert cocoa butter and chocolate first...oh FYI- I got around having to deal with the tempering issue by ordering a non-temper chocolate from a source online - good quality, affordable, and saves a boatload of time if you're planning to make a bunch of bars for gifts or something. Also, prevents you from having to spike the temp past 90F which is good security against frying your THC once ultimately added in with the chocolate.
Anywho - what have your experiences been - any luck?
 
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