Everyone knows that chocolate
is made from cocoa. In fact for
most people chocolate and cocoa
are synonymous. Chocolate
is made from the fruit of the
cacao tree. This tree is a native of South America. The ancient
South Americans found it more useful to use the cocoa seeds as a
sort of currency than use it for making chocolate.
So, how do you get chocolate from the cocoa seeds? The cocoa
beans undergo a lot of processing before they are in the form that
we recognize as chocolate. First of all they are fermented. Next,
they are sun dried and bagged before being exported. To develop the
distinctive flavor of chocolate, the cocoa beans are sorted,
cleaned and roasted. These roasted beans are then shelled and
grounded. The intense heat of the grinding process melts the fat in
the cocoa beans resulting in a fatty material with a bitter taste
called the chocolate
liquor
. From this liquor cocoa butter or
yellow fat is separated leaving behind a solid cake. This is then
ground and sifted to manufacture cocoa powder.
To make the chocolate that you get in the market, sugar
, additional fat and milk
and other things depending on the type
of chocolate that is required. The fat that is usually added to the
chocolate is cocoa butter which gives it the melting sensation.
Most countries including US permit only this fat to be added to the
chocolate but some countries also permit the addition of vegetable
fat.


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