B·Concept/Recipes

Three Bean-to-Bar Chocolate Recipes

A chocolate cake is the one of pastry’s star products. A home made chocolate cake, a professional pastry chocolate cake… We can’t leave it behind! Don’t you think? 😏

We love chocolate and that is why it is the main ingredient of many of our elaborations… Just like the ChocoCoco entremets which is one of the 12 elaborations of our Extended Online B·Concept Pastry Course that will begin, on a new edition, on October 10th 2022.

Using this method B·Concept and staying true to ourphilosophy of creating from scratch to meet our own needs and those of the consumer, we decided to make the chocolate coating ourselves using the bean-to-bar technique. With this method, we created three chocolates with different levels of cocoa content: a 40% “milk” chocolate that is completely vegan, made with organic coconut milk, and two dark chocolates, 65% and 82% cocoa, respectively.

Thanks to the bean-to-bar process, we have been able to design original and unique creations with a completely new flavor profile.

Besides working with outstanding chocolate couvertures on the market, today we can make almost any type of chocolate bar by working with the main ingredient: the cocoa beans. Hence the name of the technique: bean-to-bar.

The most interesting one, without a doubt, is our vegan “milk” chocolate, ChocoCoco. To make it, we used just 4 ingredients:

1. Cocoa beans from a fair-trade cocoa from Ghana. We roast the cocoa beans, and we crack them to remove the shell (winnowing) to obtain the pure cocoa bean pieces, also known as cocoa “nibs”.
2. Organic coconut sugar, which we choose to use since it preserves more nutrients and minerals than white refined sugar. Coconut sugar has a lower glycemic index.
3. Powdered organic coconut milk; an ingredient that does not have colorings, nor added sugars or sweeteners. It is also high in protein (16 %).
4. Cocoa butter of the highest quality.

Now that we have these four main ingredients, we will proceed to grind them in a food processor until we obtain a homogeneous paste. Next, we will refine it for 24 hours in a conching machine to obtain a very fine texture and eliminate the acidic flavors, thus obtaining a smooth and pleasant mouthfeel.

It may seem like a complicated task, but the truth is that achieving a high-quality couverture is not that difficult. The key is to use high-quality ingredients and adjust the timings until we obtain the desired aroma and texture.

As you've seen,you can achieve a very professional result using just three or four ingredients. In this case, we end up with a vegan "milk" chocolate with a cocoa content of at least 40%, but without dairy or any animal-derived ingredients—it's very creamy and has a subtle coconut flavor.

If you liked this blog post, don't hesitate to take a look at the Extended Online B·Concept Pastry Course,  to learn how to formulate your recipes from scratch with total freedom. 🤤

To help you practice, here are the recipes for our ChocoCocobean-to-bar coatings, including versions without coconut milk for those who love an intense cocoa flavor:

 ELABORATION PROCESS: Blend all the ingredients together in a food processor until a paste is obtained. Refine for 24 hours in a conching machine. Temper and store in a dry and cool place.