64 Key Takeaways

Key Takeaways

• Chocolate making, like sugar refining, takes place mainly in the importing countries. The process is quite detailed. Essentially the beans are broken down into cocoa mass (press cake) and cocoa butter and then reconstituted, along with other ingredients such as milk, sugar, lecithin, and flavour into tailor-made products for the commercial market.

• One exception is compound chocolate, which has another oil substituted for the cocoa butter. It therefore needs no tempering, which real chocolate does. This is the most popular chocolate product used by bakers for regular bakery work.

• One product, after most of the cocoa butter is extruded, is cocoa powder. Dutch process cocoa powder is made when the normally acidic cocoa mass is made slightly alkaline. Cocoa powder may come sweetened.

• The “stickiness” of chocolate varies with the intended purpose. This is called its viscosity. Chocolate should be stored at about 20°C (68°F) in a clean area free from foreign odours.