The secret life of chocolate
(Theage.com.au) Updated: 2007-03-21 14:34 Are you a chocoholic? You're not alone. The average Aussie consumes 4.4
kilos of chocolate every year and we spend a collective $2.72 billion on the
stuff each year.
Together with New Zealand, Australians spend $8 million
on Valentine's day related chocolate products alone, according the Confectionary
Manufacturers of Australia.
Have you ever wondered where all that
chocolate comes from, and why people like it so much? 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.
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