I feel like someone should tell you that you are doing an absolutely AWESOME job with the videos. You are quickly becoming one of my FAVORITE channels here on YT. Thank you!! Will definitely make this and report back. Thank also for sharing the link to the butter.
I don't use it often, and in my area, I only have access to the cheap stuff. It works in a pinch but when this bottle runs out I'll be trying yours! Cheers!
Strangely enough, mine took longer because I first infused vanilla bean in vodka, then split it to make brown creme de cocoa and white creme de cacoa. The portion for white, I used white chocolate hot cocoa mix (Milky Bar), but because this also contained sugar, I had to add less additional sugar to make it a 'creme' liqueur. I'm glad to see yours separated too, as I was starting to think I'd messed up somewhere.
It was an interesting learning process. I've used it a few times since and can't say I love it. But then again, it's not used in many drinks. However, the idea of "rapid" infusing using a blender is now something I do want to test out in the future. There are a lot of recipes that require steeping for weeks or a shortcut is using a whipped cream charger, but I'm thinking a blender should work well.
V60 ftw! Since you have one, I’m figuring you’re no stranger to extraction. I think the steeped recipe could have used a more even extraction of the white cocoa butter through grinding on something like a mortar and pestle at least. There were some serious boulders in there. This is a case of the more even grind yielding the better result. Anyway, subscribed.
You’re 100% correct. I was mainly following other recipes I’d seen and they seemed strange to me to have such large chunks of the white chocolate. Just wasteful. But I’m assuming a blender would work better than other ways of grinding. I’m interested to test out the method more in the future.
alternative method: melt the butter, set it aside and agitate it as much as u can for 48 hours, freeze it, then filter thru a coffee filter after removing any chunks of butter. cheers!
It would be a good comparison but I'll leave that to someone else because I have 2 bottles of White Creme de Cacao which is enough for a lifetime. However, if I ever make some regular Creme de Cacao I will for sure try that method.
What if you blend... then let steep for two weeks and only then filter that... Will it intensify the flavour? I could only say the flavours would mellow with each other and with the alcohol, rather than just thinking about the intensity. Also... If you filter out the butter (fatty component) will that compromise the flavour? I would assume the vodka sucks the flavours in and the filtered out "butter" is expectedly tasteless.
So great video first off! I did notice how phenomenally difficult this is to filter with the instant method. Coffee filter on a large mesh strainer over a bowl and stopped after a few teaspoons filtered out (even with applying stirring and pressure towards the filter). This makes sense as it is fat. Perhaps after blending pour into a large bowl and let sit for 30mins, skim, wait another 30, skim, and then pour through 2 fine mesh strainers. However even with this method it was still quite cloudy/sediment, may have to skim again later. I thought about buying a vacuum filter but not enough shelf space to justify. I was curious if you had any suggestions that might improve this aspect of the technique?
Not sure why it would have so much trouble filtering. Were you using white chocolate or some type of powder? In the few times I made this, it filtered very easily in a coffee filter. You could try freezing it after blending to solidify the fat.
I bought a block of food grade cacao butter and chopped into chips to weigh out to spec and make it easier to blend in the vitamix. Freezing is a great thought thank you 👍!
Not to throw a curve ball here, but I would think fat washing would be the way to go. Cocoa butter is literally the fat from the cacao beans after all. In fact, given the very low melting point of cocoa butter, I imagine that quite a lot melted in the blender, so maybe that's why the quick version wins...
I’d agree with that. Not sure how much the heat from blender plays a roll and would be interested to see if a heated fat washed version = or better than blender version. I’m all set for white crème de cacao for life, so it would need to be something else. The premise for me using a blender was not ground breaking, but something simple I hadn’t seen done. It was mainly a response to so many “rapid”‘infusions using a whip cream canister and I could not imagine how that would be better than a blender. In my mind, it’s all about reducing surface area and the violent atmosphere of the blender providing more “infusion.” But this is definitely one of the very first questions I would ask Uncle Dave Arnold if I get the chance.
I honestly do not know. It has a pretty high sugar and alcohol content and I am keeping it on the shelf, but it's not an ingredient I typically use. Ingredients like this are best in the or checking on periodically and looking for mold.
