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Written by Marshall Brain, MCT
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Tuesday, 06 February 2007 |
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Are you a chocoholic? Many people are. The average American consumes more than 10 pounds of chocolate every year. About 36 million of those heart-shaped boxes of chocolate exchange hands on February 14.
Have you ever wondered where all that chocolate comes from, and why people like it so much?
The process of making chocolate is absolutely fascinating.
Chocolate starts with a tree called the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao). This tree grows in equatorial regions, especially in places like South America, Africa, Indonesia and Hawaii. The cacao tree produces a fruit about the size of a small pineapple and shaped like a football. Inside this fruit you find a big handful of cacao seeds, also known as cocoa beans. If you dry these seeds in the sun, you end up with a nut that looks a lot like an almond.
If you have ever made peanut butter at home, you know something about making chocolate. Making peanut butter is incredibly easy. You take peanuts, roast them, and then toss them in a grinder or a blender. The peanuts turn into peanut butter.
You can do exactly the same thing with cocoa beans. If you roast them and toss them in a grinder or a blender, you get a thick liquid called chocolate liquor. It smells absolutely heavenly.
Chocolate liquor has nothing to do with alcohol. It's just the name that chocolate makers give to liquefied cocoa beans. The reason that cocoa beans turn into a liquid when you grind them is because cocoa beans are about half fat. At room temperature this fat is a solid, but you only have to warm it up a little to liquefy it. Grinding the beans is a good way to warm the fat up.
If you let chocolate liquor cool and solidify, what you have is pure, unsweetened chocolate. It is bitter, but it's possible to acquire a taste for it. Or you can take the chocolate liquor and put it in a big hydraulic press. The press lets you squeeze out the fat. We call the fat cocoa butter, and you can use it to make everything from white chocolate to tanning products. The brown solids left behind in the press are known as cocoa powder, which is great for baking or for chocolate milk.
Most people do not ever eat unsweetened chocolate, cocoa powder or cocoa butter. Instead, we buy our chocolate as confections. The word confection means that sugar is added, and it is sugar that takes out the bitterness and makes cocoa beans taste so good.
When you eat dark chocolate, also known as semi-sweet chocolate, what you are eating is cocoa liquor mixed with extra cocoa butter and some sugar. It sounds like a simple recipe, but it's not like you can just toss these ingredients in a bowl and serve it. Chocolate-making is an art.
First you have to put the ingredients through a process called conching. In one type of conching machine, big heavy rollers mash the ingredients over and over again on a granite slab. The rollers grind and blend the ingredients together. The goal is to break up the sugar crystals and cocoa solids to the point where the chocolate is absolutely smooth when you eat it. The conching process can take up to three days in the finest chocolates.
After conching you have to temper the chocolate. You do this to make sure that the fats in the chocolate crystallize in the right way. It turns out there are 6 different ways that the fats can crystallize, and only one of them makes for good eating. By carefully heating and cooling the chocolate at exactly the right temperatures, you get perfect crystallization. The chocolate snaps when you break it and it melts in your mouth.
To make milk chocolate, you add milk to dark chocolate. Some people think it makes the chocolate creamier, other people think it just dilutes the flavor. To make white chocolate, you leave out the cocoa solids altogether. You mix cocoa butter with milk and sugar to make a white chocolate bar. The same rules for conching and tempering apply.
All of this leads to an obvious question — why do people enjoy the crushed seeds of the cacao tree so much? Obviously it tastes good to lots of people, what with all that fat and sugar involved, but there is something else going on as well. Some people become absolutely addicted to the stuff. That may be because chocolate contains several interesting chemicals. The most important of these chemicals is theobromine, which is similar to caffeine and can lift your spirits. Other chemicals in chocolate include anandamide and phenylethylamine, or PEA, which is also known as the "love chemical" because of its effects on the brain. The problem is that the amounts of these chemicals are so small that it is hard to say whether they have any real effect on a person.
The next time you enjoy a smooth, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth piece of chocolate, think about the cocoa bean in all of its many forms. It is an incredibly popular source of pure pleasure for millions of people. | Only registered users can write comments.
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