Chocolate is a world-renowned delicacy that has a unique taste and magical ability to enhance mood. It is used to prepare a huge variety of desserts and drinks, since its composition is ideal for culinary and confectionery experiments.
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Chocolate base
Chocolate is made from the seeds of a cocoa tree - cocoa beans that ripen for 4 months and have an astringent bitter taste, completely unlike the taste of chocolate. Cocoa beans are divided into three groups: Asian, African and American, and their quality is noble and consumer. It is from the "consumer" cocoa beans that more than 90% of the world's chocolate products are made. Noble varieties include some types of Trinitario and Criollo, which have a delicate multi-tone aroma and a delicate taste, while the majority of Trinitario and Forastero species, which have a tart bitter taste and a more rude aroma, are considered to be consumer varieties.
To give the cocoa bean a unique chocolate flavor, they are subjected to complex processing processes.
The ripe fruits of the cocoa tree are divided into two parts, they clear the seeds of the pulp and wait a few days until they ferment, after which the seeds are dried in the sun, which halves their size, and also gives them a brown color and a milder taste. Then the cocoa beans are packaged in bags and sent to European and North American factories, where they are cleaned, sorted and fried in rotating drums. The quality of future chocolate depends on the quality of roasting grains - for example, elite varieties of cocoa beans are fried at a rather low temperature, as a result of which they acquire a most delicate aroma.