Raw Chocolate
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 flavor. Different beans from
different places have different qualities and flavors, so they are
often sorted and blended to produce a distinctive mix. Next, the
roasted beans are winnowed. Winnowing removes the meat (also known
as the nib) of the cocoa bean from its shell.
Once roasted, winnowed, and blended, the nibs are ground, and the
ground nibs form a viscous liquid called chocolate liquor (the word
liquor has nothing to do with alcohol -- that's just what it's
called). All seeds contain some amount of fat, and cocoa beans are
no different. However, cocoa beans are half fat, which is why the
ground nibs form a liquid. If you have ever ground up peanuts to
make real peanut butter, that is similar -- real peanut butter is a
thick liquid. The difference between peanut oil and cocoa oil is
that peanut oil is liquid at room temperature while cocoa oil is a
solid up to about 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).
Chocolate liquor is pure, unsweetened chocolate. Eaten in this
state, it's pretty nasty because it is bitter, but it's possible to
acquire a taste for it.
You can do two different things with chocolate liquor. You can pour
it into a mold and let it cool and solidify. This is unsweetened
chocolate. Or you can press it in a hydraulic press to squeeze out
the fat. When you do that, what you are left with is a dry cake of
the ground cocoa bean solids and cocoa butter (useful in everything
from tanning products to white chocolate). If you grind up the
cake, you have cocoa powder. You can buy both unsweetened chocolate
(baking chocolate) and pure cocoa powder at the grocery store. What
you are buying is ground cocoa beans, either with or without the
cocoa butter.
