Choose Your First Chocolate Project
How to choose
You can begin with finished chocolate, with cacao mass, or with fermented and dried cacao beans. Each start takes you further back in the making process. The right choice depends on whether you want to practise moulding, decide the ingredients in your chocolate, or work with the beans themselves.
Compare the three starts
| What changes | Finished chocolate | Cacao mass | Cacao beans |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you begin with | Chocolate that has already been made | Unsweetened paste ground from cacao nibs | Fermented and dried beans |
| Work before moulding | Melt and temper the chocolate | Combine the mass with dry ingredients, refine, then temper | Roast, crack, remove the husks, refine, then temper |
| Main equipment decision | A bowl or double boiler, thermometer, and moulds | A melanger to refine the added ingredients | Roasting and winnowing tools, plus a melanger |
| What you learn first | How chocolate behaves as it melts, sets, and leaves a mould | How the ingredients affect sweetness and texture | How the beans and their roast affect the finished chocolate |
Cacao mass is also called cocoa liquor. It contains the ground cocoa solids and their natural cocoa butter, but it is not yet a finished sweet chocolate. Starting with mass skips the bean preparation while leaving you to formulate and refine the batch.
Start with finished chocolate
This is the route for learning to temper and mould before you take on refining. Chocolate with enough fluidity is easier to spread through a mould, and tapping the mould helps remove trapped air.
- Begin with: finished chocolate suited to moulding.
- Practise: melt it gently, temper it, fill the mould, tap out air bubbles, and let it set.
- Choose this when: your main question is how to get a clean set and release from the mould.
Start with cacao mass
Begin here when you want to make the chocolate itself but do not want to roast and winnow beans on the first attempt. Melt the mass, combine it with dry sugar and any cocoa butter your formulation needs, and refine the mixture in a melanger until it feels smooth. Temper it before moulding.
- Begin with: unsweetened cacao mass.
- Allow for: a melanger and time for refining.
- Choose this when: you want to adjust the ingredient balance without adding the bean preparation stages.
Keep water based ingredients out of the refining mixture. Moisture can seize the chocolate.
Start with cacao beans
This route adds the stages that happen before cacao becomes mass. Start with fermented and dried beans, roast them, let them cool, crack them, and separate the nibs from the husks. The nibs then go through refining with the other ingredients before the chocolate is tempered and moulded.
- Begin with: fermented and dried beans, not finished chocolate.
- Allow for: roasting, cracking, winnowing, and refining.
- Choose this when: you want to learn how bean choice and roasting change the batch, and you are ready for more stages and equipment.
If shine and mould release are what you want to learn first, begin with finished chocolate. If ingredient balance is the attraction, start with cacao mass. Choose beans when you want the extra work of roasting and winnowing to be part of the project.