Following on from my previous article on Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans, I’ve decided to do a follow up article on tips that you can use to bring out the best in your chocolate covered coffee beans, ensuring time and time again that yours are the best on the block and taste a treat.
Select a Familiar flavour
Firstly, when purchasing your coffee beans, its best you select a roast that is more similar to the coffee you normally drink. If you don’t have a preferred roast you can always buy a few beans of each, then mix them into the chocolate one at a time ensuring you separate them on the tray then taste testing, to find out which bean makes your taste buds shout out with joy.
Pick Fresh Beans
Fresh coffee beans are also a lot better than older ones that may have been sitting in a supermarket for a while. This is one of the reasons that specialty coffee stores win out against supermarkets, in that not only do they have a broad range of flavors, generally the beans they sell are far more fresh than that sold at the supermarket.
Use the right chocolate
There are a variety of different flavors of chocolate that can be used to make great tasting coffee beans, some of which include milk chocolate which is the most commonly used for covering the coffee beans, there is also dark, semi-sweet or even white chocolate, all of which will produce great flavors (I personally prefer white chocolate it tastes amazing).
Cook it right
When cooking the chocolate , its best if you cook it on a low temperature setting and stir it often. If you use a higher temperature for the chocolate some of the chocolate close to the bottom of the pan may burn and make the entire batch taste strange. When cooking in the microwave a good estimate of time is approximately 90 seconds (1 1/2 minutes) per 1/4 cup of chocolate. Although its best if you check the chocolate often to see if it has melted through or if it is still solid.
Moisture is bad
Ensure you do not get any moisture into the chocolate, for this can cause lumps in the chocolate. If lumps form use 1 tablespoon of shortening per 1/4 cup of chocolate and stir until smooth.
Keep it cool
Leave the chocolate to cool to a warm temperature before beginning to dip the coffee beans in it, this prevents your hands from being burnt when dipping the beans into it.
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Thanks for Reading and happy cooking,
– Maria Glensworth
