How to get the perfect chocolate bar color ?

[ResolvableOwl]

UPDATE: With the leftovers of my cocoa powder dyed M&P soap, I made a dilution series test.

The original mix contained cocoa solids at 8.6% abs. (10% minus the fat content of the cocoa powder). Respective %ppo values are again a bit more than twice as high, since M&P is about half soap, half solvents.

From left to right: cocoa solids content

• 0% (pure M&P base)
• 0.6% still semi-translucent and more of a dirty amber/caramel colour, rather than chocolate.
• 2.4% Its hue is closest to edible (dark) chocolate, yet it's still somewhat translucent and still looks a bit like jelly. It lathers off-white, ivory.
• 3.9% Little colour change, but the opacity went up to a satisfactory level. Lather is pale brown like caffè crema foam.
• 8.6% (the original bar – with some glycerol dew issues after a few days exposed to air). Colour saturation, diminishing returns: Better save the extra cocoa powder for the next hot chocolate, or brownie baking day (unless you want an intensively brown lather).

YMMV with a less transparent matrix (like CP, HP, opaque M&P bases, addition of white pigments) that might help lighten up things.

tl;dr: Usually, cocoa powder is recommended at about 3%, and here you see why.

 

[KimW]

@ResolvableOwl, Thanks for posting this info. Are these all made from a commercial M&P base, or M&P that you made? That is, are these bars soap or syndet? I've been watching this thread because I've been wondering if I get a dark chocolate brown using cocoa in CP. Neato looking bars, btw!

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Hehe, yes! These chocolate moulds are so beautiful, just a bit impractical for actual soaps … but well suited for small test batches that hold up one or two hand washes.

I made the M&P from scratch, for the recipe see over there (with another lovely chocolate mould, yay!). But unlike there (lard), this is a palm/canola/coconut recipe, hardened up with hydrogenated canola wax.

I might try out how much harm a pinch of titanium dioxide would do to this colour, if it's any good to reach a lighter hue. Most people like chocolate because it is sweet and greasy – just a few initiated appreciate the richness of cocoa itself, and are sorry that average milk chocolate usually contains as little as 3% cocoa solids. Relevant for soapers, the cocoa quickly darkening in the alkaline medium has to be balanced by a light pigment. Maybe even for “dark” chocolate soap. The “pure” one really is too dark already, and lowering cocoa powder is to little avail.

 

[Arimara]

Hehe, yes! These chocolate moulds are so beautiful, just a bit impractical for actual soaps … but well suited for small test batches that hold up one or two hand washes.

I made the M&P from scratch, for the recipe see over there (with another lovely chocolate mould, yay!). But unlike there (lard), this is a palm/canola/coconut recipe, hardened up with hydrogenated canola wax.

I might try out how much harm a pinch of titanium dioxide would do to this colour, if it's any good to reach a lighter hue. Most people like chocolate because it is sweet and greasy – just a few initiated appreciate the richness of cocoa itself, and are sorry that average milk chocolate usually contains as little as 3% cocoa solids. Relevant for soapers, the cocoa quickly darkening in the alkaline medium has to be balanced by a light pigment. Maybe even for “dark” chocolate soap. The “pure” one really is too dark already, and lowering cocoa powder is to little avail.

It should work fine. Just think carefully about which TD to use if you haven't bought any yet.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Another UPDATE: Dilution/mixing series of cocoa vs. TiO₂ M&P.

I had pre-made a white 3% “concentrate” (you can tell by the white spots what a terrible job I did with pigment dispersion), and poured it into mini-chocolate bar shape. So, the dosage was super easy (0.5 g per piece), and the most tedious part of the whole campaign was calculating the precise composition afterwards.

See (my*) blends as a rough estimate of how colours might turn out. For colour comparison, I put a piece of (edible) dark chocolate with 60% cocoa (20% cocoa solids) and a waffle bar covered in 30% milk chocolate (typ. about 4% cocoa solids).
To recreate the illusion of “dark” chocolate, a bit of TiO₂ does help increasing the opacity for a more “brilliant” brown. At the light end, the soap already looks more like gianduja than chocolate (which doesn't exactly make things better, hunger wise).

*YMMV: Results are, of course, highly dependent on the type of the cocoa powder, TiO₂, pigment dispersion skills, and soap base (CP/gelled/HP/M&P, initial colour and opacity).

No chocolate was harmed during the making of these photographs.

 

[josephung]

I'm a big fan of chocolate and I always try to taste different chocolates because I love to do that.