Personalised Chocolate and How It’s Made
Personalised chocolates are fast becoming a really popular gift. It makes sense, too, because if there’s anything better than chowing down on a block of choc, it’s chowing down on a block that’s got your name on the wrapper. But how does all this sugary goodness go from cacao beans in the factory, to choccies in the fridge? Well, here’s how.
First things first, the cacao beans get sifted for foreign objects – after all, no one wants a stone or a limb wrapped in foil. The remaining contents are then weighed and sorted into cacao type, so the maker knows what beans are being used in the chocolate. For the record, some manufacturers use as many as 12 types of bean in their recipe, so they have to be very precise with the measurements to ensure the flavour is consistent.
Next up, the beans are roasted in large, rotating ovens in order to bring out the flavours and that unmistakable aroma. They’re stuck in there at temperatures of up to 143?C for anywhere between 30 minutes and two hours. Now dried and darker than before, the cacao beans are then cracked and winnowed, whereby the outer shells are cracked and then blown away. What’s left are called ‘nibs’, which are edible, chocolaty and very bitter.
The nibs now need to be crushed and ground into a thick paste, known as the chocolate liquor. It’s not, despite the name, in the least bit alcoholic and is instead smooth and creamy, as well as remaining bitter. To sweeten things up, improve the texture and ensure kids bounce of the walls when they eat it, the manufacturer will add stuff like sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla and milk.
You could chomp down on this now, and it’d taste pretty darned good. But it wouldn’t have the texture we associate with a personalised chocolate bar, because the cacao and the sugar are still grainy at this point. That’s why the manufacturer runs the mixture through a series of steel rollers to refine the texture.
Then, to refine it even more, and to really emphasise the flavour, the mixture is ‘conched’. This machine mixes and mashes, swirls and aerates the chocolate, at which point more cocoa butter and some soy lecithin will probably be added. All this basically gives the personalised chocolate its silky smooth texture. So if you’re making cheapo chocolate – like the stuff you hang on your Christmas tree – conching may only take a few hours. But if you’re going high-end, this can last up to six days.
Finally, the chocolate is toned down by stirring, letting it cool, slowly heating it back up and then repeating the process a few times over. It’s this that gives the personalised chocolate its slight shine. And that’s it. Finito. Chocolate. done.
There’s nothing like tucking into some scrumptious chocolate, but how about making it that bit more special with some personalised chocolate? GoneDigging offer personalised chocolates, each with an unique wrapper design which can be personalised with any name and message.
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