Chocolate.doc

Chocolate has become one of the most popular food types and flavors in the world. Gifts of chocolate molded into different shapes have become traditional on certain holidays: chocolate bunnies andeggsare popular on Easter, chocolate coins onHanukkah,Santa Clausand other holiday symbols on Christmas, and chocolateheartsor chocolate in heart-shaped boxes onValentines Day. Chocolate is also used in cold and hot beverages, to producechocolate milkandhot chocolate.So today I want to make a brief introduction of chocolate. Chocolate contains alkaloids such as theobromine and phenethylamine, which have some physiological effects in humans, but the presence of theobromine renders it toxic to some animals, such as dogs and cats. There are several types of chocolate . White chocolate is formed from a mixture of sugar, cocoa butter and milk solids. Although its texture is similar to milk and dark chocolate, it does not contain any cocoa solids. Because of this, many countries do not consider white chocolate as chocolate at all.Dark chocolate is produced by adding fat and sugar to the cacao mixture. We also call this sweet chocolate”. Dark chocolate has been said to reduce the possibility of a heart attack when consumed regularly in small amounts.Semisweet chocolate is a dark chocolate with low sugar content. Bittersweet chocolate is chocolate liquor to which some sugar (typically a third), more cocoa butter, vanilla and sometimes lecithin have been added. It has less sugar and more liquor than semisweet chocolate, but the two are interchangeable in baking.Unsweetened chocolate is pure chocolate liquor, also known as bitter or baking chocolate. It is unadulterated chocolate: the pure, ground, roasted chocolate beans impart a strong, deep chocolate flavor.Raw chocolate, often referred to as raw cacao, is always dark and a minimum of 75% cacao. Because the act of processing results in the loss of certain vitamins and minerals, some consider raw cacao to be a more nutritious form of chocolate.Some people who purchase chocolate off the store shelf can be disappointed when they see whitish spots on the dark chocolate part. This is called chocolate bloom and is not an indication of chocolate gone bad. Instead, this is just an indication that sugar and/or fat has separated due to poor storage.Actually, chocolateis a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropicalTheobroma cacaotree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC. The majority of the Mesoamerican people made chocolate beverages, including the Aztecs, who made it into a beverage known as xocoltl, a Nahuatl word meaning bitter water”. The seeds of the cacao tree have an intensebittertaste, and must befermentedto develop the flavor.Then I want to show you the production of chocolateHarvesting Cocoa & Cocoa processingStep #1: Plucking and opening the PodsStep #2: Fermenting the cocoa seedsStep #3: Drying the cocoa seedsAfter that, you can manufacture chocolateStep #1: Roasting and Winnowing the CocoaStep #2: Grinding the Cocoa NibsStep #3: Blending Cocoa liquor and molding ChocolateBlending means adding ingredients - The chocolate that we eat contains sugar, other flavors (like vanilla) and often milk (in milk chocolate). We should add these ingredients according to his or her secret recipe. For this reason, w