Chocolate, a very familiar snack. For foodies, chocolate is definitely a classic taste, fragrant and sweet, let people linger, if you add milk, hazelnuts, cranberries, etc., the taste is even richer, so that the color of chocolate has become a classic, countless people like "chocolate brown", and even want to drool at first sight.
The raw material of chocolate is cacao, cacao beans are the seeds of cacao fruit, and cacao fruit is the fruit of the cacao tree. Everyone is familiar with chocolate, but not necessarily with cocoa, and the hot cocoa we drink in winter is made from cocoa. In fact, the cacao fruit is not as small as we think, and the fruit grown on the cacao tree weighs 2 pounds. So with such a heavy cocoa fruit, why is the chocolate so expensive?
Employees at the chocolate factory said that it is not so simple to make cocoa into chocolate, even if the cocoa fruit is large and heavy, and the price of the cocoa seeds used to make chocolate is not expensive, but the steps to make chocolate are very cumbersome, and the labor costs and preservation costs are not small expenses.
Cocoa trees, usually grown in hotspots such as Africa and South America, and also grow in small quantities in parts of Southeast Asia. As one of the oldest plants on Earth, the cacao tree has been domesticated by the Mayans of the Americas more than 3,000 years ago.
However, the Maya at that time did not master the skill of making cocoa seeds into chocolate, nor did they make cocoa powder. They just dig out the flesh of the cacao fruit and eat it, and the cocoa beans are discarded. Later, a young man from the Amerindian inadvertently tried to fry the cocoa beans and found that the cocoa beans would emit a rich and charming fragrance when heated.
Cocoa fruit, can be said to be a large fruit shape, when the fruit is ripe, the weight of the cocoa fruit can generally reach 2 pounds, there are 20-40 cocoa beans. But at this time, the cocoa beans are not like the coffee color we are familiar with, the cocoa fruit is cut open, and the cocoa beans at this time are wrapped in the flesh, white, and the cocoa flesh tastes a bit like mangosteen, with a little sweetness, which can be ignored.
At this time, the cocoa beans have no taste, and just looking at the white beans, you can't get an appetite. But as long as the cocoa beans are put into the wooden box for fermentation, the fermented cocoa beans immediately change and begin to secrete the hidden aroma inside the cocoa beans, and the aromatic flavor is emitted, and the taste of chocolate gradually becomes stronger.
After a week of fermentation, the cocoa beans are removed from the wooden box to dry. Freshly fermented cocoa beans have a strong sour taste, which becomes mild as the sun shines, and the chocolate flavor we often smell gradually becomes apparent. At this time, the dried cocoa beans are sent to the chocolate factory and baked once.
Baked cocoa beans, at this time has been dyed with a beautiful brown, but can not be eaten directly, must be crushed, shelled, up to several days of grinding, the solid cocoa beans ground into a liquid, this is not called "liquefaction", workers get cocoa butter, that is, thick silky chocolate pulp, at this time the chocolate pulp can be eaten, the taste is very strong.
The chocolate syrup is poured into the mold, cooled and solidified, and finally released, packaged, and sent out of the factory, at which time the chocolate will be put on the shelf and waiting for people to choose. Now it seems that from cocoa beans to chocolate, there are too many processes, so the high price of chocolate is not set casually, even if the cocoa beans are very cheap, chocolate can never be cheap.