All About Chocolate

Chocolate is amazing stuff, and perhaps the most amazing thing is that anyone took the trouble to figure out how to process it in such a way that it would taste good. Right off the tree it's pretty rank.

It all starts with the cacao tree, which grows in the warm countries along the equator. The fruits of the Cacao tree are great pods (like a bizarre squash) which grow and ripen year-round on the trunk of the tree. These are cut off, split open and allowed to partially ferment. After a bit of this the beans are separated from the pulp, dried and shipped to the factory (usually overseas).

At the factory the beans are roasted and ground, and the various parts are separated and extracted. The two main products are cocoa butter, which is a remarkable edible oil; and cocoa liquor (or cocoa solids), which is everything else.

So far, none of this is particularly edible.

Solid or bar chocolate is made by blending cocoa liquors from various regions, from different species and varieties of cacao trees, and from different processes. All of the conditions under which the pods are harvested and fermented, and all of the conditions under which the beans are dried and processed, will contribute to the final taste of the chocolate. (This is a lot like coffee, isn't it?) Manufacturers blend various cocoa liquors to achieve the flavour that they want.

Pure cocoa liquor (which is a solid, by the way) is very bitter - it's really quite inedible. We use Callebaut unsweetened chocolate (99% cocoa liquor) to adjust the tartess of the bittersweet chocolate that we use with our maple walnut product. To make edible chocolate the manufacturers reintroduce the cocoa butter, and sugar. And it's right here that most of the major differences in taste and quality between various chocolates are determined as the chocolate masters add various types and quantities of ingredients.

The final flavour and texture of the chocolate is set during conching, which is done in a huge mixing and grinding and rolling machine capable of handling many tons of chocolate at once. This machine has closely fitting steel or granite rollers, and it mixes and blends all the ingredients of the chocolate together. The three main constituents are cocoa liquors, cocoa butter and sugar, and none of these are dissolved. Chocolate is a mixture, not a solution. The conching reduces the size of the particles of sugar and cocoa solids, reducing them to the point where the tongue cannot distinguish particles and the whole is a creamy mass. (This is the main difference between good fudge and bad fudge, for example - when the sugar is grainy you can feel the particles on your tongue and your teeth.) The longer the chocolate spends in the conching machine, the smoother the end product.

Dark chocolate contains cocoa liquor, cocoa butter and sugar. In Canada, the product must contain 50% cocoa to be labelled as chocolate. However, if it's going to edible, the chocolate has to contain almost 50% sugar. And here's where the really fine chocolate shows its stuff. We have some very nice Cocoa Barry Excellence chocolate which contains 55% cocoa solids and butter, which means it can contain no more than 45% sugar. And we have a little bit of Valrhona Extra Bitter (it's not bitter at all!) which is 61% cocoa solids and cocoa butter. This means only 39% is left for sugar! These chocolates are not sweet, but they are smooth on the tongue and a delight to taste because great care has been taken in the selection and processing of the cocoa products all the way through. We also have some really dreadful chocolate made by reputable manufacturers, but it is lower priced and less care and attention has been given to its components, and it shows.

Milk chocolate has a fourth component - milk solids. Most labels indicate that the milk chocolate contains whole milk powder, or full cream milk powder. The cocoa butter and cocoa solids are also still there, although there is typically only 30% or so of cocoa products in the chocolate. The cocoa butter (a wonderful edible oil) is responsible for much of the creamy, smooth taste of good chocolate, and the extra milkfat in the chocolate makes it even creamier.

Ivory chocolate contains little or no cocoa solids - it's just cocoa butter, milk solids, and sugar. It has a very different taste, and it works a little differently also. We use ivory chocolate for our bark products (which are a thin layer of tempered chocolate containing nuts or berries or something similar).

Flavoured chocolates are created through the addition of oils or extracts to the actual chocolate. We use two orange-flavoured chocolates in our product line, and we have seen hazelnut-flavoured chocolate on offer in the catalogues. The oils add a delicate and subtle flavour to the chocolate so the base chocolate has to be good or the joint effort will fail.