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Whipped Chocolate aka Chocolate Chantilly

I first learned about this from a post on egullet.org about a recipe from Herve This of his recipe for Chocolate Chantilly--you can read the thread here.  (This version follows additional excellent suggestions by egulleteer teonzo, who gave the details that make it so simple to adapt to different chocolates.) was immediately taken with the idea of enjoying my favorite chocolate in a different form, but without being diluted with anything else--no eggs, cream, butter.  Just chocolate, made soft and almost fluffy.  I wanted to see if the flavorings I'd come up with for my morning hot chocolate would work in this too, and am happy to report that they do, especially the star anise/pink pepper, because it effectively sweetens the dish without added sugar.

This is more a principle than a recipe, because the precise quantities and proportions depend on your chocolate of choice, and you need to do the calculations.  I would build in a little calculator here, so that you could enter your chocolate nutrition facts data and calculate the right quantity of water, but I am not quite so skilled as that.  Sorry.

Whipped chocolate



So.....first I'll give the recipe, then explain the how and why, and show the pictures

55 grams (2 ounces) of Scharffenberger 70% Bittersweet chocolate
69 grams (69 mL or 1/2 cup plus 2 teaspons) hot water

(optional:  pinch of 1 part star anise to 1-2 parts pink pepper, to taste (perhaps 1/4 teaspoon of the mix for this amount of chocolate)

Stir the hot water and chocolate together until the chocolate is melted and smooth.  Stir in the ground spices, if using. 

Transfer the mixture to a chilled bowl or place the bowl in an ice bath, and whisk it until it thickens to a light soft creamy mousse-like texture.

Serve at room temp or chilled.  This is so rich that it's easily 2 servings, and if you were to dress it up at all--say, with a whipped cream topping or serve with scoop of sherbet or a shortbread cookie on the side--you might get 3 out of it. 

And that's it.  Easier than pie. 

But what if you don't have or don't like 70% Scharffenberger?  Then you need to understand the why.

Essentially, you're diluting the cocoa butter in the chocolate with three times the quantity of water, gram for gram, as cocoa butter.  This gives a fat/water mixture of the right ratio to whip and hold air nicely when cool enough.  You melt the chocolate to liquify the cocoa butter, chill the mixture, and whip it until it gets light, then let it sit at room temp or refrigerator temp until the cocoa butter sets (after which point the dessert is stable for a couple of days in the refrigerator), then serve.

What's tricky is figuring out how fat is in your chocolate (different brands add more or less extra cocoa butter to the cacao mass, so don't assume that one 60% cacao is the same as another, and some makers, like Callebaut, make a variety of couvertures with variable cocoa butter for different uses, higher content for coating the outside of filled chocolates, lower content for softer fillings for same), how much water to add, and, if you don't have a scale, figuring out how many cups, tablespoons and teaspoons that quantity of water translates to.  And here comes the math!

First, check the nutrition label on your chocolate: 

Nutrition label


My Scharffenberger has 23 grams of fat per 55 grams of chocolate.

I want 3 times as much water as fat--3 times 23 is 69.  So I need to add 69 grams of water.  If I did not have a scale, I would need to convert that to other measures, knowing that there are about 14 grams per tablespoon:

69 divided by 14 is 4.9 so about 5 tablespoons water. 

And there are 16 tablespoons per cup so this is 1/4 cup plus about 1 tablespoon.

And that's it.

This is what I came up with for my 70% Scharffenberger, but it should be taken with a grain of salt, because I have not had anyone check over my ml/gram conversions to US volume measures to be sure I really got them right.

Proportions for 70% Scharffenberger

Oz SB

Grams SB

Grams fat

Grams or mL water

Water in US volume measures

1

28

12

34

2 Tablespoons plus 1 1/2 teaspoons

2

55

23

68

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon

3

83

35

102

1/2 cup minus 2 teaspoons

4

110

46

136

1/2 cup plus 5 teaspoons

6

165

69

204

1 cup minus 1 1/2 teaspoons

8

220

92

272

1 1/4 cups minus 1 1/2 teaspoons

10

275

116

340

1 1/2 cups

12

330

139

408

1 2/3 cups plus 1 1/2 teaspoons

16

440

185

544

2 1/2 cups

20

550

231

679

2 3/4 cups plus 4 teaspoons


So what if you think 70% Scharffenberger is too dark?   Or just prefer Valrhona, or have Ghiradelli on hand?  You just need to

1-decide how much whipped chocolate you want to make, using about 1 oz/serving as your guide

2-determine how many grams of fat is in that quantity of chocolate, using the nutrition guide information on the package

3-multiply that fat content by 3 to get the quantity of water right

4-if you don't have a scale, then you have to translate grams/ml water to cups, tablespoons and teaspoons (240 ml/cup, 28 ml/tablespoon, 9 ml/teaspoon).

5-make sure you have a chilled heavy bowl or ice bath ready

6-have fun whipping your chocolate.

So from the top, in pictures (click on any of the pictures to see it larger on my flickr page, or click here to see the whole flickr set)

Measure out your chocolate (here, I'm weighing previously broken up 70% Scharffenberger), and your hot water (this is fresh from the teakettle, quite hot indeed), and add the water to the chocolate:
Weighing outwaterhot water on chocolate

Stir the chocolate and water together:  I'm using my push whisk here to stir them together until it's all smoothly melted

stirringsmooth

I'm using a nice heavy glass bowl, which has been thoroughly chilled in the refrigerator, and can absorb all the heat from the chocolate/water and chill it enough so it will whip, without an ice bath.  Or you can put your mixture in a larger bowl with ice water, or chill it in the fridge until it is ready to whip (I'd haven't tried this because I'd surely forget and let it separate into hard cold chocolate layer on the bottom, and cold water on top, needing to be remelted to start the process over again).

bowlstarting whiskmore

And keep whisking until it gets thick.  Notice that the color (within the limits of my photoshopping) gets lighter as it goes along, and as it starts to thicken, the ripples in the chocolate get smoother and less chaotic--the image on the left here is after about 2 minutes of whisking, the one on the right after about 3 minutes:

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and keep whisking some more--appearance after 4 minutes, on left, and 5 minutes, all done, on right.

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In the serving dish to set up, a comparison of the finished color/texture compared to the original chocolate, and a close up of the finished texture

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