A Short Stab from Steve's Evil Kitchen

I haven't written much about my mad scientist cooking exploits lately. There just hasn't been much to write. It's too hot to cook. [Waiting to hear Ed McMahon ask "How Hot Is It?"]

I have made one amazing discovery, that turns out to be well-known among confectioners, but is the coolest thing since Mentos and Diet Pepsi were first combined in a gusher. It's very sciencey. [In all truthiness.]

I'm not a big fan of saturated fats, nutritionally (and please, don't send me a link to something promoting them), but they're indespensible in making candies, as they're the only natural ones that are solid at room temperature. One of the great joys of eating chocolate is that it melts in your mouth, because its melting point is just about body temperature. The other fat that works that way is coconut fat, which is hard to find and which I made myself starting with coconut cream and a centrifuge.

Your kitchen doesn't have a centrifuge??? Next you'll say you don't have a rotary evaporator.

Now the amazing science bit: coconut fat and chocolate form an eutectic. Using that word in itself makes taking that course in materials science in 1983 worthwhile.

[Chewing on the grammar of that last sentence.... (In Homer Simpson voice) mmmm, eutecticy.]

Combining the two different types of fat lowers the melting point to just above room temperature - if your kitchen isn't hot from cooking. There's some hysteresis involved (In Jim Gaffigan voice: "Hysteresis? How many sciencey words is he going to use?"), as after one melts the two fats, one has to freeze them to solidify them, yet they melt at a higher temperature.

The payoff is that chocolate made with the combined fats melts instantaneously in one's mouth, so fast that your mouth will cool like you're eating a mint.

Coolness indeed.
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Yeah, this post suggests some neurological derangement on my part. Nothing that chocolate can't fix, though.