How to make chocolate

Cocoa beans are similar in shape and size to coffee beans, and both are nearly odorless and

flavorless in their raw stage. It is the roasting process that brings out coffee's aroma and flavor,

while a combination of fermentation, drying and roasting produces that astonishing chocolate flavor

we adore, and some of us become addicted to. Strangely enough, many of the aromatic chemical

compounds are similar in the raw beans for both coffee and cocoa.

The fruits that house coffee and cocoa beans are very different. Cocoa beans grow in a

good-sized fruit resembling both in size and shape to a down-pointed papaya. It turns from green to

purple, then bright yellow as it ripens while the cocoa seeds grow in a mucilaginous mass inside.

The harvesters cut the fruit open by hand, scoop out the seeds, and pile them up in large bins for the

first step of the process, fermentation. The carbohydrate-rich pulp ferments, producing alcohol,

carbon dioxide and acetic acid. This chemical process generates enough heat to deactivate

enzymatic action working in the beans, preventing further ripening or spoiling. The heat also

decomposes the pulp enough to free the seeds.

Fermentation takes anywhere from 3 to 10 days. By that time, the seeds are juicy, plump and

dark brown and, after drying, they give off a faint chocolatey aroma. Then the processor roasts the

dried, almond-shaped beans for an hour at a relatively low temperature of 250°F (120°C). The

roasting process drastically alters the beans’ chemistry, and creates about 300 different new

chemicals while it also develops the full chocolate aroma.

The final step is to crack the cocoa beans and remove the hard outer shell. They also remove

the innermost part of each bean, the seed germ to prevent spoilage, a process similar to the

degermination of wheat kernels to produce white flour from whole wheat. What is left is called the

nibs, the meat of the cocoa beans which is 50 percent cocoa butter. In spite of the high oil content,

the nibs have considerable storage life thanks to its built-in natural anti-oxidants. Next, the

processor grinds the nibs, an action that generates enough heat to melt most of the cocoa butter, that

results in a brown viscous liquid they call chocolate liquor. After cooling this liquid solidifies into

unrefined baking chocolate and this is the basis of all cocoa and chocolate products.

How to make cocoa

A Dutchman named van Houten patented an ingenious method in 1828. His process was to

squeeze the fat from the cocoa butter under pressure, leaving a dry block of cocoa like a chunk of

dark brown coal, that he could grind into fine powder, the same cocoa powder you buy at the market

today. This was a significant step, because the original high-fat chocolate was heavy on the

stomach, even for the more physically active Victorians.

It would be a shame to waste the excess cocoa fat. It has a pleasant chocolatey aroma, a deep

rich brown color and a particularly desirable physical property—it melts at body temperature. What

is a better use for cocoa butter than in the cosmetics industry where it finds many applications? Any

cocoa butter the cosmetics people cannot use is a perfect animal feed. (Do cocoa butter-fattened pigs

develop chocolate-flavored bacon?)

Refining and perfecting chocolate

Baking chocolate and chocolate candy bars came many years after van Houten's cocoa. In

1847, an Englishman, Joseph Fry, patented a process for producing blocks of chocolate that

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