The plan continues

Today I'm figuring out the cost to make chocolate. It includes purchasing the beans, shipping the beans to me, roasting, cracking/winnowing the shells, grinding, tempering and molding, packaging, and electrical usage of equipment. Then I add my time, what I need to make a profit, marketing, legal fees, insurance, and a portion of the profits have to pay off equipment. I'm almost at a price / lb. I should be able to make a living in about 5 yrs. hopefully sooner.

another step

The sinks are ordered. I should have a quote on packaging tonight and a quote on custom molds with my company name on them by Monday. I'm very excited! I've found a totally recyclable package. I will get a sample to make sure the size is going to work and will post a picture when I have one.

I had a fun day making chocolate covered coconut. This time I added finely chopped roasted almonds to the coconut instead of adding a whole one to the top. I also rolled them into a ball before baking them because cutting coconut is a pain. After that they got hand dipped in dark Peruvian. Hopefully the next time I make them the shop will be running. I will be ordering equipment on Tuesday and by the time it gets here I should be ready for it. I have a few tools that require 220volt and one that uses 220 and a 3 phase converter for speed control. There is hot and cold water that I will plumb in as soon as the fixtures are in place. PVC for the drains are a fairly easy job. I actually enjoy plumbing.

That's all for now. Hope you all had a nice Valentines day.

Grindeur

Another piece of equipment. This grinds the roasted beans into chocolate.It will do 60 lb of beans. To start I'm planning on 3 batches/month. One dark, one milk, one white. My current grinder will be grinding the roasted nuts and possibly Mole'. The wheels that grind are made of granite so it's 500 lb. and shipping is about $1/lb.

Ginger and Mint

Today's chocolate.

I caramelized some ginger, chopped, and used that in a white chocolate ganache. I added a bit of rum flavoring. Peruvian dark chocolate shell.

The other is a peppermint filling and Peruvian dark. The filling is fondant, 500g. Peppermint extract, 20g. and to really round things out I added 2 Tbl. organic butter.

Getting closer

Got a price on more equipment today. It's a tempering machine. Very excited!

white chocolate

So this is white chocolate. If you have tried Green and Blacks, it's similar. I used un-deodorized cocoa butter. The cocoa butter still smells like chocolate and gives an added complexity. Madagascar vanilla beans, Natures First full cream milk powder, sugar, and some soy lecithin (from soy beans) to make the sugar and cocoa butter get along better chemically. The recipe is from Chocolate Alchemy. I have made the powdered goat's milk white chocolate and it was very nice. I actually like it better than the cow's milk.