Printing chocolate with Foodini

Printing Chocolate

Chocolate is one of the most difficult ingredients to print and requires practice and patience. Water is the worst enemy when printing chocolate! It is very important to make sure all the capsule components are dry, including the area between the capsule press and the rubber ring.
Is it your first time printing with Foodini? If so, we advise you to start with other ingredients that are easier to print, like hummus or guacamole.

When you begin printing with chocolate, we suggest starting with easier-to-print chocolates that do not need to be tempered, like ganache and compound chocolate. 

Please see our Printing with Chocolate playlist on YouTube: This playlist is to help you understand the differences in chocolate, why real chocolate needs to be tempered (and what tempering is!), and how to print chocolate using Foodini.  This playlist is a mix of videos we've made plus select videos from others that we think will really help you have success in chocolate printing.


Recommendations

Recommended Nozzle Sizes: Ø 0.8mm or Ø 1.5mm. 

Depending on your type of chocolate and ambient temperature, it may be useful to preheat the empty capsules before adding your chocolate. We normally preheat to 32°C.


Troubleshooting printing with chocolate

PROBLEM
SOLUTION
Foodini cannot detect the ingredients



The chocolate may have solidified in the nozzle. Remove the nozzle if the chocolate in the capsule body is liquid but the chocolate in the nozzle is solid, clean the nozzle with hot water. Dry the nozzle completely and re-attach it to the capsule body.

I do not know if my chocolate is
tempered well




To check if your chocolate is well tempered:
1. Put the point of a knife into the liquid chocolate.
2. Pull the knife out of the chocolate and let it rest for 3 minutes at room temperature.
3. After 3 minutes, look to see if the chocolate has solidified and if it has a shine. If it does, your chocolate is tempered well. If it does not, re-temper your chocolate.

My chocolate is not able to temper well



Tempering chocolate is difficult and takes time to perfect. There are different ways to temper chocolate and some people prefer one way over another. See an example of different ways of tempering chocolate from  Callebaut  and Ghirardelli .

The chocolate is too liquid


Decrease the capsule temperature to make the liquid chocolate thicker. Do not decrease too much as the chocolate should not solidify during printing.

The printing lines are clearly visible



Increase the capsule temperature to make the chocolate more liquid, but not too much as the chocolate could get too liquid. The print lines will flow together, print lines may still be visible, but less obvious. If this not work, try increasing ingredient flow speed and reducing line thickness.

Chocolate comes out at first, but later
it does not



The chocolate could be liquid enough to pass the ingredient detection process, but solidifies while printing, this becoming too hard to print. Increase the capsule temperature to make sure the chocolate does not solidify. If this does not work, increase both ingredient flow speed and print speed.

Chocolate does not come out at first,
and later it does

Increase first ingredient flow in small increments, as a small change has a big effect.


Foodini prints too much chocolate at first

Decrease the first ingredient flow in small increments, as a small change has a big effect.

Print collapses during printing

Decrease both ingredient flow speed and print speed so the printed layers have time to solidify. It also helps to print in a cool place.


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