kitchen Angst!

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, is my all time favorite film. The original, not the Tim Burton remake unfortunately (even though his did seem more true to the book, Ronald Dahl did write the screen play for the original!). When I was young I remember wishing I could be one of the kids that find a “GOLDEN TICKET” and get swept away to a land of chocolate waterfalls, and lollipops! The scene in the Edible garden has always fascinated me, I have even tried to recreate some of the props for parties and special events (completely edible versions of course) with limited success.
You see when I went to Culinary school I did want to get a well rounded education, but I really wanted to focus on pastry. I dreamed of getting a job in a place like Las Vegas where I could just spend my day creating Chocolate bunnies for Easter that were 15 feet tall, or entire 8 foot Christmas trees out of gingerbread, chocolate, and sugar! I know this obsession came from the movie and it is still with me today.
I didn’t stick with my game plan as well as I should have and ended up on the Savory side of the kitchen as my career. Oh well I can still play every now and then and have fun! My friend Derek lives in Germany near Cologne, Where there just happens to be a Chocolate Museum. While I was visiting him last may we went. He blogged about it yesterday and brought the memory back into my head. So I thought I would seize the moment to discuss it further. I won’t go into great detail about the Museum because he has already done that, but I will talk about Chocolate and the chemistry behind it.
Chocolate comes in Four forms: Bitter , Bittersweet, sweet, and Milk. The only difference between these are the amounts (by percentage) of the four ingredients used to produce the chocolate. Don’t worry I’ll keep it simple. The four ingredients are: Chocolate liquor, Cocoa butter, Sugar, and milk solids. Thats it, thats all you need to make your own “Wonka Bar”.
Now unless you live in a rain forest and have cocoa trees in your front yard you aren’t going to be harvesting your own beans. So I don’t feel the need to go into the Chocolate liquor/ cocoa butter bit any more than to say… they are both byproducts of the roasting and milling process of the cocoa bean. Chocolate liquor is roasted/ ground cocoa beans.Cocoa butter and Cocoa powder come from the refining of the chocolate liquor.
Bitter Chocolate for example has 95% Chocolate liquor, and 5% added cocoa butter.

Bittersweet on the other hand has 35% -50% Chocolate liquor, 15% added cocoa butter, plus 50%-35%sugar (depending on the amount of liquor) you do always want to reach 100% of course.
Sweet contains 15%Chocolate liquor, 15% added cocoa butter and a Whopping 70% sugar! Thats why such a bitter bean is sweet! A spoonful of sugar makes anything go down, right? I’m sorry I’m mixing my movies up too much.
Milk, now here is where most of you are starting to drool! But I have to stop and tease you a bit and ask you a question. I told you there were four ingredients in making Chocolate right? I have only mentioned three of them so far, That”s right class, it’s in the name Milk Chocolate is the only one with milk solids, This not only gives its creamy lighter flavor ,but also the mouth feel(texture), and lower melting point. It does melt in your hand!
Milk Chocolate has has only 10%-15% Chocolate liquor, 20% cocoa butter, 50% sugar, and it adds (you guessed it) 15%-20%% milk solids. 100% always (for someone who hated math and never saw the need for it) I am crying now!
All I have to say is that I know it is possible to recreate that entire Scene with edible sweet product, and that makes me crazy inside. Even if I personally may never pull it off. I will however keep trying!