How to make cocoa powder soluble in water or milk without sugar?

Question

Since cocoa powder is not soluble in water/milk (the physics prevent the molecules of cocoa from entering into the molecules of water/milk) none of the suggestion given will actually work. And given that I tried, before I researched and found out that it is in fact impossible, I do know it to be true. I have tried using butter to dissolve the cocoa powder before adding it to the milk. I've had limited success with that. In time the butter with the cocoa tends to separate. I sweeten with stevia. Does anyone know of something that can be added besides sugar that will allow the cocoa powder to dissolve into the milk molecules?

Answer 1

As already answered, it does not dissolve anyway. It's a suspension of fine particulates.

Practical methods to make it clump less (other than mixing with sugar) are:

• use hot liquid (hot cocoa is easier than chocolate milk)
• start with making a paste with a small amount of liquid, rather than dumping the cocoa powder into all the liquid (this also allows doing that step hot, and then mixing the paste with cold liquid if you are not after a hot result.)

Answer 2

After some bickering & refusal to believe simple 'science' in comments…
Cocoa powder is insoluble - no matter what you do, it will never dissolve. You could grind it to the finest powder known to man & it will still never dissolve in anything you could drink the result of.

Tea & coffee are the same, just easier to see - you extract the flavour from them & discard the solids. Cocoa solids settle to the bottom of the cup, which is actually ideal, as you don't want them in your drink, unless you like a grainy mouthful of spent dregs.

The flavour is in the liquid - the soluble bit that did actually dissolve in your drink.
BTW, instant coffee & many types of 'drinking chocolate' contain no or very little solids - the manufacturer already threw them away for you.

By the same token, butter will never mix with anything water-based either. It also is insoluble.

You can force a solid to stay suspended in a liquid. The result is known as a 'suspension'. It's done basically by thickening the liquid until the liquid is thick enough that the difference in specific gravity of the liquid & solid is insufficient for it to settle through the liquid.

Similarly, you can force a fat to stay in-mixed with a water-based liquid. This is done using an additive known as an emulsifier.
Common kitchen emulsifiers include honey, mustard, apple cider vinegar, aloe vera, gelatin, salt, baking soda - or you could investigate some of the hydrocolloids; including guar gum, gellan gum, and carrageenan… then there's lecithin, soy lecithin, diacetyl tartaric acid ester of monoglyceride, sodium stearoyl lactylate, and sodium phosphates.
Most of those are not going to improve the taste of your drink.

Just keep stirring.

Answer 3

Cocoa is not soluble in milk. However, you can control the sedimentation by increasing the thickness of the milk, or decreasing the size of the cocoa particles. Non-dairy milks can help with this as well. By the way, it is only the sugar that is dissolving, when you mix it with cocoa, and add that mixture to milk.

Answer 4

Others have technically said this, but I think someone could come away from here thinking suspending (not dissolving) cocoa powder in liquid is mechanically difficult, complicated, or unreliable. It's not—the liquid just has to be hot.

Add cocoa to cold milk in a mug (where it floats on top), microwave it, then stir. It should mix easily, be smooth, and settle only a little in the time it takes to drink it.

I've had no reason to try these steps in a different order, but I can see why adding dry powder suddenly to hot milk might cause clumping. Or you could give up because it doesn't work at room temperature and just miss out.

Answer 5

If you mix cocoa and milk in a blender, it will mix to chocolate milk consistency with no lumps. See if a mason jar fits your blender blade - I just put (soy) milk, cocoa, and any sweeteners or flavorings in a pint jar, screw the blade/lid on, pop it on the blender, then drink right out of the jar. I drink it pretty fast, so the cocoa doesn't have time to settle back out.

Answer 6

Cacao powder itself is unsoluble in water

Cacao powder is, technically speaking, mostly the powdered complex mixture of cocoa solids, a byproduct of chocolate manufacturing. For use as cacao powder for baking the product isn't drained of all cacao butter, leaving some fats.

Those fats carry most of the cacao aromae, and most fats are insoluable in water. But you can make an emulsion, if you work enough. Emulsions are mixtures where two unsoluable liquids are forced to be well distributed, for example by vigorous whipping. Vinaigrettes are a very common emulsion. And as you know the example, they'll fall apart into two layers soon enough.

Milk too is an emulsion of fat in water, just more stable than vinaigrette. Just like vinaigrette, it will, even if homogenized, separate into whey and the milk fats if left alone long enough.

The tasty part of cacao - the actual complex molecules that make cacao and chocolate tasty - can dissolve in the fatty parts of the milk, but not in the water. That effect is what can be used in cooking hot chocolate, buuuut, it requires a lot of stirring, heat and maybe even a little bit of magic powder...

The magic powder Lecitine

In many commercial products, lecitine is used as an emulgator to increase the mixability of fats and water, but it still is an emulsion, not a solution.

But... how is this cacao drink powder 'soluble'?

It isn't cacao powder, as you use it for baking.

Cacao drink powder, such as Caotina, is ,on a very basic level, a concoction of mainly sugar as a solvable substrate, lecitine as the emulgator, and the extracted aroma from the cocoa solids. Depending on what you get, other ingredients are added, such as in caotina is actual chocolate and it thus doesn't work well in cold milk.

Mixed into an emulsion of fat in water - milk - it will dissolve some of its fatty components into the fat bubbles of the emulsion, the suggar ends in the water and the lecitine keeps the bubbles in suspension.

Caotina Ingredients: Cacao powder, lecitine, suggar, chocolate(sugar, cocoa mass, fat reduced cacao powder[...]

If you use water instead of milk, you will discover that only the suggar dissolves and only a very small part of the fats goes into emulsion. Heating this mixture can aid a little, as it allows the fats to melt and separate to smaller bubbles, but it still never will dissolve the fat in the water.

Some other drink powders are mixable with hot water - and they not just carry a little fat from the cacao powders, they often mix in fat to be added, allowing the emulgator to work and create the little fat bubbles that stay in emulsion. As an example, look at this label for a capuchino-cacao powder:

Ingredients: Suggar, Wey-powder Cocos Fat, Milkpowder, dehydrated coffee, deoiled cacao powder, salt, sodiumphosphate, aroma

You can't drink it if you join the Chemical club!

Only if you crack out the chemicals you have a chance to make fats soluble in something that is mixable with water. Most chemicals that can do so do NEVER belong in food. One of the most common water-mixable fat-solvents is acetone. You'll find it in some kitchens to remove permanent marker where it is used to write production dates or best-before dates on containers. A fat-acetone-water mix would not separate into a fatty and watery layer until the acetone leaves the mix. But you should never consume such a mix.

Answer 7

Melt some butter Then add the cocoa powder in to the warm butter Then heat the milk, ( dnt boil) just hot not warm Then slowly pour the hot milk in to the butter - cocoa mixture ( first add little then mix well, then add the remaining while stirring) dnt pour the whole milk in one go, then it wouldn't mix well. ( usually this method works for me, but sometimes something go wrong n doesn't work, then i will grind the mixture, n will get the perfect texture)

Answer 8

Actually baking powder dissolves Hershey's pure cocoa quite well. only a few tiny specks remain, well with coffee any way.