What is chocolate?

Chocolate is produced from the seed of the cacao tree.

Unfortunately for many home gardeners eager to have their own stash of chocolate, trees grow only in tropical regions: Central America, the Caribbean, Indonesia, and Africa.

Cacao production

Cacao production is labor-intensive. Trees require hand harvesting and machetes, as the pods can reach a size comparable to butternut squash and hold between 30 and 50 beans.

Cacao trees grown in the wild with shade can maintain production for nearly 100 years. Take that, biennials.

Cacao processing

The beans, about the size of almonds, are allowed to ferment for 3 to 7 days and then dried. This fermentation is essential — the raw seeds are very bitter.

After fermentation beans must be sorted, cleaned, and weighed before roasting.

After roasting, the beans enter a machine that cracks the seed coats and blows them away, leaving behind cacao nibs, which are 47% cocoa solids and 53% cocoa butter.

Cocoa butter (from cacao) is the main source of fat in chocolate. The cocoa solids are ground into cocoa powder, the same stuff that flavors your chocolate protein powder.

Cacao nibs left after bean cracking can be milled into a “nut butter”-like paste, called chocolate liquor (alcohol free), which can then be pressed.

The chocolate liquor on its own is dry and gritty. It can be combined with other ingredients like sugar, vanilla, and lecithin to make a more palatable product, and/or be broken down on machinery and kneaded for days to improve the texture. Careful heating and cooling will create a stable structure.

Chocolate history: Willy Wonka and the Mayans

Back in 250-900 A. D. the Mayans noticed a wild tree (cacao tree) occupying rain forests in South America and figured out it could be cultivated. They would ferment, roast, and grind the beans, similar to what we do today.

But the Mayans didn’t have a “Willy Wonka Factory” with helpful machinery to produce a variety of confections. Instead, they enjoyed chocolate as a beverage, with ground beans, water, chile, vanilla, black pepper and cornmeal, sweetened with honey.

To Mayans, cacao was valuable stuff. It wasn’t consumed on a regular basis, but often used as part of tradition and rituals. Cacao beans were also used as a form of currency.

The industrial revolution changed the chocolate “experience.” The cocoa press was invented in 1828 to separate chocolate into cocoa butter and solids (cocoa powder). Between 1875 and 1894 the names “Nestle” and “Hershey” became more popular with the development of milk chocolate and mass production of chocolate bars spanning the globe. Specialized chocolate companies have only been popular since the 1980s.

Types of chocolate you’ll find

Unsweetened chocolate

Made from 100% cocoa liquor and bitter unless mixed with other ingredients. ( I learned this when I took a bite of my mom’s unsweetened baking chocolate at the age of 7.)

CocoaT Collection Stand

CocoaT Collection Stand is an ideal way to adequately collect all the cracked cocoa beans after it has passed through the cracker, the dimension of the stand fit exactly the base of our CocoaT Crackers, so no modification is needed. Its an ideal Cracking base that will not litter the table top or leave remnants or any of the cracked beans falling off.