h a l f b a k e r yPoof of concept
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This confection looks a bit like chocolate, but has a completely different taste.
It would consist of sugar, cocoa butter, partially defatted (14% fat or less) roasted peanut flour, and salt.
The overall percentages of fat, sugar, and salt in the confection are roughly the same as that of regular
peanut butter; the difference is that the fat consists mostly of cocoa butter and partly of peanut oil, instead of being purely peanut oil.
At room temperature, I would expect it to feel to the touch like regular chocolate, but when placed in the mouth, the cocoa butter should melt, giving a feel (and of course taste) of ordinary peanut butter.
Naturally, there's no hydrogenated fats, no artificial colors or flavors... unlike most kinds of "peanut butter chips" (which this confection, appropriately shaped, should be able to act as a replacement for).
Note: As I lack a proper kitchen in my tiny apartment, I cannot (presently) attempt to make this confection, so it's entirely possible that what I am envisioning wouldn't actually work, or taste as I expect/hope.
Blond chocolate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramac Caramac is not White or milk or dark - but it isn't made with peanuts (thank goodness), nor is it free from artificial-ness. It is very tasty though. [Jinbish, Mar 31 2010]
Somebody is doing a similar thing, but with coffee beans, not peanuts
http://tmagazine.bl...kind-of-coffee-bar/ [jutta, Dec 03 2010]
[link]
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Oh great, now I'm hungry... |
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Not being well-versed in the culinary sciences, I don't know
whether this would work. But it sounds delicious. |
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I'd be happy to try this - can't temper to save my life, but it'll do as an experiment - but I'm not sure the mouthfeel of ordinary peanut butter is all that desirable. That mix of grit and stickiness - is that really something you'd like in a bar of chocolate? |
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Not a (potential) recipe? I prefer crunchy peanut butter made from 100% peanuts, and Ghirardelli chocolate. |
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I don't know about peanut flour, wouldn't this tend to make cookies instead of confection? |
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// Not a (potential) recipe? // |
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Maybe, but it's an innovation, and it involves chocolate, so it's [Marked-For-Retention]. |
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Peanut anything = <spew!> |
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Nut flours are not the same as wheat flour, much more protein and less starch. Ground or chopped sufficiently fine, which is admittedly hard to with nut flours, I don't think this would tend towards cookieness. |
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jutta, grittyness is optional -- as with real chocolate, it should be possible to refine and conche the product to produce a smoother treat. Also, it might possibly help to grind the peanut flour extra-fine before mixing it with the other ingredients. |
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The stickiness is unavoidable, so if you suffer from arachibutyrophobia, this isn't the food for you. |
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csea, peanut flour is just (unsweetened, unsalted) peanut butter with most of the oil removed. If you wanted to make it into a cookie, you'd need to mix it with wheat (or other grain) flour. |
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MechE, what's the limiting factor in how finely nut flour can be ground? |
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I've not actually run into peanut flour. I'm more familiar with
acorn flour which retains most of it's oil, which becomes the
limiting factor. That is you can chop it but not really grind
it, and that doesn't allow as fine an output. If the oil is
pressed or leached first, this may not be an issue. |
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Wouldn't you grind the peanuts (or peanut flour) in the same way as cacao is ground to produce cocoa mass? Why not use a mature technology? |
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I picked up some cacao butter today and finally did the experiment. Melted the butter, adding the defattened peanut powder I'd ordered just after this had been posted until the texture resembled what I'd expect to see when melting chocolate, add salt (a little too much, possibly) and sugar to taste. It really needed the salt.
I don't have a conche, so that's that. I then poured the resulting goop into a piece of aluminum foil, cooled to room temperature, covered, and refrigerated to set in a thin bar. |
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The result definitely has the feel, sheen, and snap of chocolate, and the mouth feel of slightly gritty chocolate (if you've ever tried boutique "stone ground" chocolate, it's kind of like that)--it's much less like peanut butter. Yet very peanutty. Maybe a little too peanutty. If you'd use this material in a real food that people eat voluntarily rather than because they're on a lifeboat and need the energy, I think you'd really want to tone it down. |
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Goldbb, you don't need a proper kitchen to try this; just a microwave, some sort of stirrable container and the ingredients should suffice. |
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Makes sense, cocoa powder is bitter, the butter
offsets it. Given that peanut is neutral to sweet,
it's going to tend to cloying. |
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Can anyone come up with an additive that would
tone down the sweet (or add some bitter) either
without altering the taste, or with a viable
additive taste? The only thing I'm coming up with
is citrus zest with more of the peel interior than
normal, which should produce a decent orange or
lemon/peanut flavor. |
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Nuts + chocolate = Yuck! I can't see how this
seemingly daft idea is going to improve the flavour of
either the peanuts or the chocolate. |
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People who put nuts in chocolate should have their
nuts put in chocolate... just my opinion. |
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I'm impressed that we've* actually managed to carry out some actual, real experimentation on this instead of just arguing about it (hmm, halfbakery as an offshoot of the Popular Front of Judaea?) +
* Taking collective credit for someone else's efforts is entirely justified and there's probably a UN resolution that establishes it as an inalienable human right. |
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// People who put nuts in chocolate should have
their nuts put in chocolate... |
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Whether or not that is a bad thing really depends on
how many chocolate lovers of the appropriate
gender(s) are around to lick it off, no?
With a little cream - who knows,
it might even lead to a ganache a trois. |
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jutta, thanks for doing the experiment! :) Now,
considering that I generally consider most store bought
peanut butter cookies to be not peanuty enough, you
saying it might be too peanuty means that I'm sure that
I would love it :) |
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I am surprised that the mouth feel doesn't have peanut
butter's stickiness, I recall reading somewhere that that
was caused by the peanut proteins... I suppose it must
be the peanut oil that makes peanut butter sticky. |
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8/7, infidel, if there's no cocoa solids in it (which there
wouldn't be), then I would expect most chocolate lovers
to consider my idea as blasphemous and un-chocolatey
as white chocolate ;) Or as un-chocolatey as the Ka-
Pow coffee bar that jutta kindly linked to. |
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//Why dont we have a word for mouth feel?// We do:
"mouthfeel." How can you not like a word that contains "thf?
" |
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'Texture', I believe, is the word you are groping for. The Japanese are particularly keen on diverse mouthfeels as an essential component in any quality meal. I had a twelve course meal in a Japanese hotel once, and it was a completely strange but interesting journey through a culinary wonderland. Each course was rather on the small side I might add and a side order of chips was not available. |
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I once mixed cocoa powder with powdered sugar and peanut butter. It was terrible. |
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I missed this first go around. Chocolate is a very interesting thing. I like the idea of breaking it into its 3 parts and swapping in other components. Peanut is a strong flavor. Maybe this would be more subtle with other nuts. I suspect only some will be available as a defatted powder though. |
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Thank you for doing the experiment, Jutta. |
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I bet this would be good with pistachio. I cannot imagine "too pistachio-y". |
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Recipe - albeit a nice recipe.... but still a recipe. |
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