Have you ever wondered how people get chocolate from? In this article we'll enter the amazing world of chocolate so you can understand exactly what you're eating.
Chocolate starts with a tree called the cacao tree. This tree grows in equatorial regions, especially in places such as South America, Africa, and Indonesia. The cacao tree produces a fruit about the size of a small pine apple. Inside the fruit are the tree's seeds, also known as cocoa beans.
The beans are fermented for about a week, dried in the sun and then shipped to the chocolate maker. The chocolate maker starts by roasting the beans to bring out the flavour. Different beans from different places have different qualities and flavor, so they are often sorted and blanded to produce a distinctive mix. Next, the roasted beans are winnowed. Winnowing removes the meat nib of the cacao bean from its shell. Then, the nibs are blended. The blended nibs are ground to make it a liquid. The liquid is called chocolate liquor. It tastes bitter. All seeds contain some amount of fat, and cacao beans are not different. However, cacao beans are half fat, which is why the ground nibs form liquid. It's pure bitter chocolate.