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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