Dairy-free cocoa is made without milk or milk derivatives. Cocoa comes from the cocoa tree and is processed into cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and chocolate liqueur. These products can be used to make dairy-free chocolate, but chocolate products usually contain dairy.
Dairy-free cocoa is any type of cocoa that does not contain milk or milk derivatives. All types of cocoa come from the cocoa tree, which is a tree that produces oblong fruits filled with cocoa beans. The process of turning cocoa beans into butter or cocoa powder does not require the addition of milk or butter, and pure cocoa does not usually contain any dairy products. If it is processed in a facility that also processes dairy products, such as a chocolate factory that makes milk chocolate, the cocoa cannot be considered dairy-free because it may have been contaminated with a dairy product.
There are several types of cocoa without milk. Cocoa may refer to the natural fruit or beans of the cocoa tree, which can be eaten raw but are rarely found outside the tropical nations where they are grown. In most cases, the beans are extracted from the fruit, fermented, dried and then shipped to processing plants where they are roasted and then made into cocoa products. Dairy-free chocolate liqueur, cocoa powder and cocoa butter are made with these roasted beans like chocolate, although this chocolate often contains dairy products.
After the cocoa beans are roasted, they are usually ground and blended into a product known as chocolate liqueur. Not to be confused with chocolate liqueur, which is a sweet alcoholic beverage, chocolate liqueur is simply cocoa beans in liquid form. This product is a type of dairy-free cocoa and is used to make the other major types of dairy-free cocoa: cocoa butter and cocoa solids. Melted chocolate liquor can also be chilled until it solidifies into a dairy-free cocoa product known as baking chocolate. Made with pure cocoa, baking chocolate is bitter and doesn’t taste like the chocolate in candy bars that most people are familiar with.
Chocolate liquor must be pressed to separate the fat, known as cocoa butter, from the solids that are usually ground into cocoa powder. Neither the butter nor the solids contain dairy because they are made from pure cocoa. Once these components have been separated from the chocolate liqueur, they can be mixed with sugar, butter, milk and vanilla to create chocolate and milk chocolate. Chocolate products are generally not dairy-free, although there are some varieties of chocolate that are made without dairy products.
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