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Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which are harvested, fermented, dried, roasted, and crushed to create a liqueur. Sugar, cocoa butter, and other ingredients are added to create sweet chocolate, which is then conched and tempered before being packaged and consumed. Chocolate has been used for thousands of years, with the Mayans and Aztecs consuming it as a bitter drink.
Chocolate is a general term used to describe a number of foods made from cocoa beans. It is particularly used to describe a sweet confection made from cocoa with added sugar. There are many different ways to prepare it, some dating back thousands of years. The Mayan use of chocolate is believed to date back more than 2,500 years, and the Aztecs also used it ritually and for pleasure. This chocolate was consumed as a bitter drink, sometimes with chilies added, and was an important item throughout the New World.
The cocoa bean grows on the cocoa tree and the first step in making chocolate is harvesting these beans. The beans are then cut open, the pulp is taken out, and the husks are discarded or used for other purposes. The mix of pulp and seeds is then left to ferment, usually in wooden crates in the ground, for between five and ten days. After sufficient flavor has been imparted through fermentation, the beans are dried either by spreading them out in the hot sun or using a special oven. After they’ve been cleaned of twigs, dust, and other contaminants, they’re ready to be bagged and shipped.
The cleaned beans are then roasted to make the flavors even stronger and to reduce the acidity slightly. They are then cracked and blasted through a fan to remove the shell from the bean’s flesh. These chocolate nibs are crushed by hand, using large stones or by a machine, and the heat generated by the pounding liquefies them into a liqueur. This liquid is then poured into a mold, where it hardens into blocks of dark, unsweetened chocolate.
At this point, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla, and other ingredients can be added to the chocolate to make it something closer to what we think of as sweet chocolate. Cocoa butter, the fatty part of the nibs that is often separated during the grinding process, is used to give it a smooth texture and is a key ingredient in milk chocolate and many dark chocolate desserts. The cocoa liquor can be excluded from the final product, as is the case with white chocolate, so that the flavor is imparted solely by the cocoa fat.
Once mixed, the chocolate can undergo further mixing in a process known as conching. Conching involves fine grinding using many small metal beads, breaking down the sugar crystals and particle chocolate into smaller and smaller pieces to remove the grittiness and leave the smoothest, richest feel possible. The better the product, in general, the longer it has been conched and the smoother the final mouthfeel.
Finally, the chocolate must be tempered to ensure that the crystals that form as it solidifies are of uniform size. Tempering involves dissolving an already crystallized chocolate in liquid, gradually adding pieces and stirring them until dissolved. Once properly tempered, it can be shaped and left to solidify, at which point it is ready to be packaged and consumed.
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