Inspired by an upcoming post, I decided to take the plunge and attempt to make my own chocolate chips. It was way too much fun.
Making your own chocolate chips is really simple: melt down the chocolate of your choosing, add flavor, and re-pipe.
For this batch, I used half green tea, and half lavender. The green tea was just pulled from regular old bags, and ground with a mortar and pestle.
I used lavender extract for the lavender version – but it was so strange. I’m not sure whether it was the vodka from the extract, or the fact that it was cold and liquid, but it did not play nicely with the white chocolate I used! It turned out a great deal more waxy in texture. The flavor was fine, though.
My standard way to get the chocolate (or any icing) into the piping bag is to use a tall glass and fold the bag over the edges. I then cut off a tiny piece of the bag and piped my heart out. I found that sticking the chocolate in the freezer for a minute helped my piping technique quite a bit; it was easier to control and create individual chips once it had cooled off a little.
It was a very fun projects, and opens a ton of possibilities – melt down dark chocolate and mix in cinnamon and cayenne? Melt down milk chocolate and mix in caramel? Orange extract or zest? Lemon? I can’t wait to try more.
Lovely idea! And how fantastic to infuse whatever you’re baking with tea!
You’re a genius. Love, love this idea. Can’t wait to try soon!
Ok, the green tea chocolate chip idea is GENIUS!! I absolutely love that one:) Lavender sounds so peculiar too, I’m also perplexed to try it out! LOVE your blog, I’m so glad I found you and can’t wait to read more!!
How awesome and inventive! I’ll definitely have to try this.
Wow! Fantastic idea. I feel like this takes some patience and a steady hand, but green tea chips definitely sound worth the effort.
OMG how awesome is this. I love it! Thanks. there are so many endless possiblities
with the lavender I wonder if you cook off the alocohol before adding it to the chocolate would get rid of the ‘negative’ aspects? If you try it let me know, thanks
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SO creative! I love this idea:)
This is SUCH a good idea, how come I never thought of this?
Also, I find a lot of white chocolate naturally gets waxy when melted and cooled… not sure why.
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Brilliant. I make fake cupcakes and trying to figure out how I could use this to make fake chocolate chips. Any thoughts would be great! I can’t use real food it could attract bugs. I my try to melt something else…plastic. maybe?. Thanks
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How long would these keep for?
I believe the most commonly used term for the chocolate getting “nasty” textured is “seizing.” It happens when water (or alcohol or basically any liquid other than oil) comes into contact with the molten chocolate. It’s usually only a slight cosmetic or texture issue, but it’s good to know what causes it, most of us learn it the hard way. The best solution is to use only flavoring oils instead of alcohol-based extracts(but use very small amounts, it is significantly stronger). Gel food coloring also tends to work better than regular.
Not to sound like a snob, I just wish someone had told me about chocolate seizing and the alternatives. It’s not a fun thing to discover by ruining an entire batch of chocolate on christmas eve.
That. Is. So. Rad. And cute.
And nice piping technique indeed.
Where does one usually find flavouring oils… ?
How cool! That is so creative. I will have to experiment and try and make some chocolate chips in different flavours.