Wait, before you automatically click “Essential Cookies” please read...
.svg "Keylink Limited"){kind=logo}
5 Reasons To Use Compound Coatings In Your Business
5 Reasons To Use Compound Coatings In Your Business
When factors like temperature, humidity, and time make using couverture chocolate tricky, compound is the ideal swap, giving your baked goods the look and taste of real cocoa with less of the hassle. We may be chocolate lovers, but we’re also big fans of convenient, time-saving and easy-to-use products! Read on to discover our top five reasons to use compound coating in your bakery business…
by Lyndsey Hall
06 August 2024
Reason One: Compound Coatings Are Easy To Use
Using compound couldn’t be easier – simply melt and apply in whichever way you prefer, et voilà! A chocolate flavoured coating, bottom or drizzle that will elevate your bakes and tempt your customers.
Unlike couverture, compound coating doesn’t require tempering, so it’s really as easy as melting and using straight away. It’s handy enough to sit on display in your bakery or cafe all day without changing appearance. And there’s no special tools or equipment required, just a microwave and a bowl!
Reason Two: Coatings Are Less Temperamental Than Couverture Chocolate
Chocolate is famously temperamental, losing its beautiful shine and snap if not perfectly tempered; absorbing tastes and smells from the other items it’s stored near (never keep your chocolate near your washing powder!).
Compound coating is specially designed to prevent moisture, flavour, colour and fat migration, and to maintain its specific melting properties. Resistant to temperature changes, like those in a warm kitchen or bakery, it keeps its appearance longer than chocolate as it won’t melt or bloom.
When you’re short of time and working under pressure in a hot, humid environment, it’s a real lifesaver.
Reason Three: Compound is a Cost-Effective Option
We all know the price of chocolate has skyrocketed this year, but as compound doesn’t contain cocoa butter—one of the most expensive cocoa products right now—it’s still very affordable. Compound coating is made from cocoa powder (or whey powder, in the case of some white coatings) and a cocoa butter substitute such as vegetable oil or palm kernel oil, giving it a true chocolate flavour with less expensive ingredients.
Giving your traybakes, pastries and cookie pies a chocolatey look and taste doesn’t have to cost the earth, and you can still choose from milk, white or dark, and even colour or flavour your coatings with oil-based colours and flavourings!
Reason Four: Coating Boasts a Robust Cocoa Flavour
The sensory experience of chocolate is a huge part of its allure, melting slowly in the mouth and releasing all of those delicious flavours and aromas, whether single origin or a blend of beans. It’s hard to replicate and impossible to beat.
But compound coating certainly tries… if you choose a good quality one! With its upfront, robust cocoa notes, many people even prefer the taste of compound as it’s uncomplicated, sweet and powerfully chocolatey. Coating may lack the long-lasting notes of real chocolate, but when you’re looking for a quick hit of chocolate flavour to top your flapjack or millionaire’s shortbread, it’s the perfect choice.
Reason Five: Compound Coating is Incredibly Versatile
Not only is compound easy to use, intensely chocolatey and hardwearing, it’s also suitable for a wide range of applications. Whether you’re dipping biscuits and cookies, bottoming cereal bars, topping tarts, drizzling over traybakes and pastries or decorating cakes, it’s a versatile tool in any pastry chef or baker’s arsenal and saves time, money and effort.
That’s a huge win in our book!
Bonus: 6 Ways to Use Compound Coating
We couldn’t just leave you without a few suggestions for ways to use this brilliantly versatile and convenient product, so here are our top five ways to use compound coating in your business:
- Dipped cookies and fruit – coating is perfect for dipping your favourite cookies, biscuits, flapjack bites and even fruit! We love white coating on strawberries, and premium dark chocolate compound on shortbread biscuits. Yum!
- Mix with our Keylink essentials spreads – you can melt compound coatings with the matching Keylink spread to create a cuttable layer in a traybake!
- Top a traybake or tart – a thick layer of premium milk compound coating on a caramel tart, is there anything better? Or top a biscuit base with lemon spread followed by white compound coating for a delicious lemon and white chocolate flavoured slice.
- Coat a cake pop or ice cream stick – there’s nothing more fun than food on a stick! Make balls of cake sponge and ganache, pop a stick in it and then dip into your chosen coating before decorating with sprinkles. You could even use gel colours and oil-based flavourings to make your cake pops and ice cream sticks even more fabulous!
- Bottom a snack bar – nothing premiumises products quicker than a layer of chocolate, and compound is the next best thing. Simply dip the bottom of your cereal and granola bars into melted compound and let it set for a delicious way to elevate your breakfast bars.
- Melt into chocolate cake and brownies – compound coating can even be used like chocolate in cakes and brownies, giving your baked goods a hit of powerful chocolate flavour at a fraction of the cost. Your customers will never know it isn’t couverture!
Find out why bakeries use both couverture chocolate and compound coating in our blog post Chocolate vs Compound Coating, and discover a new way to use coatings to creating indulgent fillings in our blog Top Tips for a Thicker, Cuttable Spread for Your Bakes.
Our range of compound coatings includes dark, white, milk and even lemon flavoured and pistachio flavoured coatings, with a premium option available in both milk and dark! Have you added compound coating to your bakery inventory yet? We love to see what you make with our products, tag us on social media @keylinkltd!
Lyndsey is a marketing executive, writer and lover of books and chocolate from Sheffield.
Her favourite chocolate is Cacao Barry Lactee Superieure.
