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Welcome to How To Cook That I am Ann Reardon and today we are Air Delight chocolate or
Aero bars if you're in Australia (or Europe) in three different ways and I'll show you
how to make the mint ones at the end too.
The first experiment I did to try and figure out how to make these was using dry ice.
The first thing we need to do is get some extra cocoa butter and add it to your chocolate
and melt that in the microwave.
The extra cocoa butter just helps to make it more liquid.
Once it is melted and it's around 97 degrees F add in your extra teaspoon of freeze dried
cocoa butter and stir that through, and that's just to temper the chocolate so that it sets
properly at room temperature.
Dry ice turns directly from a solid to a gas.
So if we put it in some warm milk for example it makes bubbles, lots and lots of bubbles.
Now I am not sure if it will work like this with chocolate though because it is thicker
for one and it may set too fast because the dry ice is so cold.
But we can always try.
So put the dry ice into a bag and smash it using a rolling pin until you get lots of
small tiny pieces.
Now tip that into your chocolate and stir it up quickly.
Now it's starting to set immediately so I'm going to stop stirring it there, and I can
see there are a few little bubbles forming but nothing like we saw with the milk.
I'm going to leave that until the chunks of dry ice have gone.
That took about 15 minutes.
Let's just break it open and look inside.
So it didn't create many bubbles but anywhere where there was dry ice we've got a hole where
that has now turned to gas.
So it does give an interesting texture that would be good on some desserts or different
things - but it's not quite what we were after today.
So experiment number 2.
Let's try putting it into a vacuum container.
I'll show you this with marshmallows first.
As you pump the air out of the container, the air left inside expands to fill the space
and that includes the air that is trapped inside the marshmallows so you can see they're
getting bigger there.
Then when we release the pressure because the marshmallows are flexible they sink back
down to their normal size.
But I'm hoping with the chocolate that it's actually going to hold it's shape.
Now to get air into the chocolate let's whip our tempered chocolate with beaters to incorporate
as much air into it as we can.
And then pour that into the vacuum container, seal it up and pump the air out of it just
like we did before.
Now you can see that it's increased just a little, but hardly at all not like our marshmallows
so that means we don't have enough air incorporated into our chocolate for this to work very well.
But let's see.
Once it's set, release the pressure and let's have a look inside if we just snap it.
It is a different texture so it has worked a little bit, there are definitely some bubbles
in there, but we are much closer to Air Delight or Aero than when we used the dry ice.
But i think we need to incorporate more air.
So experiment number 3 ... First of all, melt your chocolate with extra
cocoa butter like we've done other times and then once it gets to 97 F add more freeze
dried cocoa butter to temper it.
Then pour that into a cream whipper, now I've run the outside the cream whipper under warm
water just before so that the chocolate won't set as soon as it is poured in.
You will also need to check the maximum fill amount on your bottle, that's usually written
on the bottom.
Screw on the top.
Take a nitrous oxide charger and put it into the holder then screw that onto the top and
you'll hear the gas just releasing into the canister.
Then repeat that with a second one and then give it a really good shake.
So we are putting this under pressure and then getting that gas just to mix into our
chocolate.
Then you want to dispense that straight away it into the container.
Now we don't want to delay with this otherwise our chocolate is just going to set in the
container.
If it stops coming out properly just stop and shake it again.
And then just keep putting the rest of it in there and you can see how foamy that is,
we've got so many air bubbles in so I hope this one works better.
Add the lid on top and clip it on and then vacuum the air out from the container.
Wow that has heaps better result, did you see that expanded then.
Now I'm going to let that set.
Then release the pressure on your container and tip it out.
I put acetate at the bottom of mine so it didn't stick to the container so that's probably
a good idea.
And it looks to me like it has sunken in the middle a bit, perhaps my container didn't
hold it's vacuum very well.
It's just a cheap vaccume container so it may not be able to do that.
Let's cut it open and have a look at the texture inside.
We've got lots of tiny air bubbles just like in Air Delight or Aero bars.
So this one is using the cream whipper and the vacuum, this one is using beaters and
the vaccuum and this one is using the dry ice.
Now I've got one more thing I wanted to do.
Experiment number 4 ... my favourite is the mint Aero bar which I don't know if you have
that in Air Delight in the US but here in Australia we have mint ones and it's my favourite.
So for that we're going to need some white chocolate, freeze dried cocoa butter to make
our chocolate runnier.
Some more cocoa butter for tempering, and some green powdered food colouring and some
peppermint essence.
Add the colouring to the cocoa butter and just a drop of peppermint essence if you want
it mint flavoured.
Microwave that until it is liquid and stir it really well to make sure that powdered
colour is mixed in and you don't have any dots of colour still.
Microwave your chocolate for it to melt, remembering to stir often so it doesn't burn.
So I did 30 seconds stir, 30 seconds stir, 20 seconds stir then 10 seconds stir until
it is all melted and smooth.
Then pour in your coloured cocoa butter mixture and stir it around mixing it into your chocolate.
And once your chocolate gets down to the 97 degrees F add in the smaller amount of cocoa
butter to temper it so that it's going to set properly.
Now pour that mint chocolate into your warmed up cream whipper, screw on the top, charge
it up and then shake it really well.
And now dispense that into the vacuum container.
Once you've got it in, just add the lid, clip it shut and vacuum the air out of it.
I love watching it rise up like that, then you just know it's going to work.
Once it is set, tip it out of the container and that looks much better, it hasn't sunk
in the middle.
And look at that, that looks amazing.
It looks exactly like the mint Aero bars with lots of tiny bubbles.
I'm going to slice these up and get them into bar shapes.
And to make them look exactly perfect I am using a mold, you could just coat them in
chocolate if you don't mind what shape they are.
Put some of your tempered chocolate into each mold, spread it up the sides and then push
the bubbly mint chocolate into the mold.
Letting the excess chocolate come up and over the top.
And then you can just neaten that up using a spatula.
Once they are set just pop them out of the mold and you have your very own mint bubbly
aero chocolate bars.
And my kids absolutely loved them.
"That is one of the best things Ihave had in a long time, that is awesome!"
"The bubbles in that just make it everything."
A special shout-out and thank you to everyone who came to the Meet & Greet this week at
the bookstore, it was so lovely to meet you and see photos of things you baked and talk
to you and hear your stories and give you a hug.
I just love, love, love meet and greets, I love actually meeting you guys.
I wish I could meet you all, for those of you who weren't there or live in another country
we're just going to have to keep talking in the comments.
So soon I will be doing a music themed cake video with all your favourite bands and artists
on it.
So I need you to vote in the comments below for your favourite band or artist.
Now try not to just thumbs up someone else's comment because it's really hard for me to
tally them up when they've got different amounts of likes on them - just add your vote as a
separate comment saying the name of the artist or the name of the band so I don't miss it.
Then I'll tally all of those up and put them all on a special cake in a few weeks so make
sure that you have your votes in there.
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Make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday.