The Ingredient Spotlight column features a new set-up. Starting from this edition, an ice cream maker, a technologist, and a specialist teacher illustrate the spotlighted ingredient with a recipe. Our first ingredient is cocoa, and Riccardo Talamini (Gelateria Talamini, Enschede) shares two delicious recipes with us: one for milk chocolate ice cream and one for dark chocolate ice cream. Elke Scholten, teacher in food physics at the Wageningen University, and Jacques Vos, Manager of the Ice Centre in Wageningen, offer more insight into the way in which cocoa works in ice cream.
Dark chocolate icecream recipe
Gelateria Talamini has been selling ice cream on a milk chocolate basis for years. Riccardo’s father, Angelo Talamini, even received the prestigious Coppa d’Oro in 2009. Riccardo Talamini shares two chocolate ice cream recipes in magazine IJs! (Gelato!)
“Take 3 litres of sorbet mix and add 1.5 kg of cocoa powder (we prefer Elenka’s Black). Then add 250 grams of chipped dark chocolate and 50 grams of sugar. Melt this mixture at approximately 65°C and mix so the chocolate melts properly. Allow the mixture cool for 10 minutes and then churn it.”
Milk chocolate icecream
“Take 500 grams of chocolate sauce and 50 grams of thick chocolate sauce. Fill this up to 4 litres with your own milk mixture, mix well and then churn. For completeness, I will also add a recipe for milk chocolate. The recipe is quite elaborate: first we make two sauces and then we make the ice mix from these sauces.”
Chocolate sauce
- Cocoa: 1,000 grams
- Sugar: 1,800 grams
- Water: 2,700 grams
Bring to the boil, but do not cook through.
Thick chocolate sauce
- Cocoa: 250 grams
- Water: 500 grams
- Dextrose: 250 grams
Bring this mixture to the boil, but do not cook through.
Chocolate
The quality of chocolate strongly depends on the making process: if all ingredients (cocoa butter, sugar and cocoa particles) are mixed, the result is a very stiff mass that does not flow well and will not feel nice on the tongue. approximately 50% of chocolate is sugar, whilst 30% is cocoa butter; the amount of cocoa in chocolate is therefore not very substantial. In addition, milk chocolate and white chocolate also contain milk protein (5–8%). The 70% sugar and cocoa parts are surrounded by 30% fat; thus, chocolate actually consists of fat stuffed with small particles. Because chocolate contains such a large amount of particles, one must therefore make sure that they can easily move along each other so that the chocolate can flow well and the quality is improved.
Cocao particles
Before the sugar and cocoa particles can be stirred into the cocoa butter, they first have to be coated with an emulsifier (or dispersing agent), which is usually lecithin (obtained from eggs or soy); this ensures the particles can move through the cocoa butter better when the chocolate is melted. Cocoa butter in chocolate melts at approximately 34°C if the chocolate is blended well and contains the right fat crystals. This can be recognised this from the hard, crispy chocolate with an attractive sheen. Bad blends lead to fat crystals with different shapes, resulting in a melting point of even 18°C, which makes the chocolate dull and tough. This difference in melting behaviour due to different blending processes can also be applied for using chocolate as coatings in ice cream.
Cocoa powder is the part of the cocoa bean without the butter. Cocoa powder is often difficult to dissolve because the cocoa particles are often encapsulated by a thin layer of fat; therefore, water particles cannot easily penetrate the cocoa particles. The solubility of cocoa powder in water can be increased in two main ways: by increasing the temperature or by adding alcohol or an emulsifier. The addition of an emulsifier has a similar function as in chocolate. Lecithin allows the cocoa particles and water to have better contact; the water will then penetrate the cocoa particles better. Cocoa particles from chocolate will probably dissolve better because they already contain an emulsifier. This is the cause of the differences in mixing quality of cocoa powder and chocolate.
The influence of cocao particles in icecream
Cocoa is derived from a plant and will therefore primarily comprise plant material. This is mainly the cell wall materials, consisting of pectin, cellulose, hemicellulose, etc., and so this is a combination of materials, all of which have a different water-binding capacity. It also depends on what kind of interaction they have with each other. In the case of ice cream, this means that the particle size of cocoa components is approximately the size of an ice crystal and an air bubble, which will not dissolve. Logically, adding cocoa particles will only lead to more solid particles. These particles - fat crystals, ice crystals and cocoa particles - will make the ice cream harder. In practice, more sugar will then need to be added to give the chocolate ice cream the right degree of scoopability.