Dan’s Chocolate Adventure

The high temperatures and humidity in the United States in the summer create condensation on the chocolates in shipping. This condensation affects our Chief Chokolada truffle, which has a white powder coating, and our Razz Matazz truffle, which has a brown sugar powder coating. The build-up of humidity can cause the sugar to melt away, making the truffle look old (it’s fairly nasty looking, actually).

To solve this problem, in the summer, we apply extra sugar to these two products. We also try to use thick foam surrounding our chocolates, as this reduces the rate of temperature change, as this reduces the severity of the issue.

This is what the Chief Chokolada looks like when all goes well:

It’s better for chocolate to be frozen than refrigerated. If you need to keep your chocolate safe in the summer, and you don’t have air conditioning, the best place is a cool, dry basement. You can freeze it, though it should be shrinkwrapped and air tight if you do so. The critical thing to remember is that when you are warming it up, you need to bring it back up to room temperature slowly. This can be accomplished by putting it in a foam container, and letting the foam slow down the warm-up rate.

If it warms up too fast the fat will bloom out of the chocolate. This means that the fat particles will lose their tight binding within the chocolate and migrate to the surface, where they create a whitish appearance. This makes the chocolate appear old.

It’s the hot time of the year again, the time when chocolate likes to turn into syrup on its way to its destination. One of the things that you do when making chocolate is you use the cocoa and fats in the product to adjust the heat sensitivity. You can take a recipe and adjust it to melt at 75 degrees fahrenheit, or have it melt at 85 degrees fahrenheit. There will be a difference in taste, though the difference is sublte.

Does Dan’s adjust its recipes based on the time of year, then? No. It creates too many production difficulties and complexities. Instead, we tailor the recipe to an average temperature and then use plenty of ice and foam in the summer to make sure it arrives ok.

As states in the South begin to reach temperatures in the high 80’s, we have to slightly adjust our products to compensate. These adjustments are subtle, and not noticeable to our average customer, but to understand chocolate, one must have a deep appreciation of temperature. If one doesn’t, one will be in the soup business, not the chocolate business.

One of the changes we make in our Chief Chokolada product is we increase the amount of powder coating by about 50%. We do this because the heat breaks down the sugar molecules, and when combined with the increased humidity that condenses on the product in shipping, it can melt away the sugar coating. This is all a visual effect, but it makes the product look old and nasty. By increasing the sugar powder we can keep the truffle looking fresh and tasty in the summer months.