Chocolate is a complex chemical delight containing over 500 individual flavour components, together with stimulants and a host of antioxidants. With that many ingredients, it’s no surprise that crafting chocolate is a science in itself, requiring careful temperature control. For starters, cocoa butter has six different forms of crystals, all of which have different melting points. And the fat crystals in the final product have to be exactly the right type, size and shape for the flavour to be correct. This is achieved though tempering, a crucial stage of chocolate production that involves cooling so that crystals form before raising the temperature slightly to melt unstable crystals.
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Did you know?
Fry’s invented the chocolate bar in 1847