It took a little cheating, by making November plural, before Chocolate and November(s) had the same number of letters. Should I have tried any other languages?
Spanish? Chocolate | Noviembre = Success!
German? Schokolade | November = Nope.
French? Chocolat | Novembre = Success!
Italian? Cioccolato | Novembre = Nope.
Aztec? Xocolatl | … = N/A.
That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Enough of that.
In order to prepare for Christmas and family birthdays in December, I needed to start practicing my chocolate skills in November. Dark chocolate, more so than white chocolate, opens a world of possibilities for chocolatiers – crafters of chocolate. Considering that we want that cocoa content in our chocolate art, dark chocolate is the way to go. Our caffeine-free friend – white chocolate – is made of milk, sugar, and cocoa butter. Meanwhile dark chocolate and the other chocolates in between contain sugar, cocoa butter, and cocoa solids. This means dark chocolate has the components of cocoa beans, aka actual chocolate.
cocoa butter + cocoa solids = cocoa beans
Cocoa butter is 50% to 57% of the weight of cocoa beans and gives chocolate its characteristic melting properties.
The Weight of the Fox Valley
This morning I discussed with my grandmother the difference between cacao and cocoa and think it would be appropriate to recap here. In short: cocoa is made from cacao. The Theobroma (“Food of the Gods”) plant is what we know as the cacao bean tree. I admire the temperament of this tree. As you can see in the graphic below, the cacao pods grow out of the branch and trunk – how resourceful! In addition, it does not seem to mind if the plantations keep it short or let it grow fully (~50 feet), it is not picky about the soil, prefers the shade, can be harvested all year long, and gets along with the bugs who enjoy living on it.
The naming convention is up to some interpretation, which adds to the confusion of cocoa vs. cacao. Does the cacao bean have to be processed in order to be called the cocoa bean? Is the bean inside the pod already called the cocoa bean? Is what you do with the cacao plant how the nomenclature is determined? There are possibly strong opinions on the matter. So far I have found that cacao refers to the plant itself and the products made from the non-roasted seeds, while cocoa products are made from roasting its seeds.
A standard 100g 70% Chocolate bar contains 80 to 85 beans, or the seeds from about one and a half Cacao Fruit. A standard 30g 10% milk-chocolate-candy bar (such as Hersheys®) contains 6 Cacao Beans, or about 10% of a pod.
Xocoatl
Check the ingredients listing when buying chocolate so you do not accidentally purchase imitation chocolate. If it does not have cocoa butter listed explicitly (rather than cheaper fats) then it cannot possibly be considered chocolate and will not work for our purposes. We need to be able to change the chemical make up of the chocolate, and can only hope to succeed with real chocolate. Hey, that’s just chemistry, sorry.
Note, if you happen to be one of those souls who cares about slave-labor and the environment, organic / free-trade chocolate is something you should look out for when purchasing.
We want chocolate that “melts in your mouth”, indicating it is real chocolate. White chocolate is not chocolate because it does not contain cocoa solids but people just call it chocolate any way, so the FDA finally gave up and said “okay let’s just call it white chocolate then.” Compound chocolate, imitation or fake chocolate, is not evil, but does not contain cocoa butter and is therefore unable to be tempered. We want to be able to temper our chocolate in order to change the chemical structure and manipulate and re-solidify it. Compound chocolate has its uses, but we will not focus on them here.
Get ready to become a tempering expert and novice chocolatier!
Food of the Month 