What melts in your mouth, slowly invigorating  your senses, your gut-instincts springing up to the ‘give me more’  temptation, the divinity of chocolates are sown  in the seeds of the theobroma cacao tree.
From the washed and graded cacao beans, how is chocolate made?
The step-by-step process involved in the making of the chocolate from cacao is:

•    Roasting
A very important step in the chocolate-making process as this will determine the flavor, aroma and color of the final chocolate. Roasting helps to remove the husk from the coffee-bean and also dries-up the nib, making it easier to grind. Roasting temperatures depend upon the type of cacao beans under process.

•    Winnowing.
The next step is that of winnowing. Here, the roasted cacao beans are winnowed to separate the husks from the nibs.

•    Blending
Here, the mild and strong varieties of cacao beans are carefully sorted and mixed together depending upon the final flavor wanted in  the chocolate. Some of the mild varieties are Caracus, Mauritius, Jamaica, Sychelles and,  to cite a few strong varieties there are the  Accra, St Lucia, Para and Dominica. It is the right blend of the mild and strong varieties of the cacao beans, which yields the ultimate chocolate flavor.

•    Grinding
Once the nibs are through with the blending process, they are ready for grinding. Here the nibs are made into a warm paste with a fine particle-size. This stage is detrimental as to how the cacao beans will be used whether to make chocolates or cocoa powder. Cocoa butter is also extracted in this process. The paste or ‘liquor’ is allowed to flow into containers.

•    Mixing
Once the nibs are ground, the next chapter on “how is chocolate made from cacao beans” is mixing. Here, the nib paste is pulverized with sugar and cocoa butter. Cocoa butter can also be replaced with Linthicum ( an inexpensive substitute ).The mixture then goes under a machine called "melangeur” , giving the nibs a dough-like appearance. For milk chocolates, milk powder or evaporated sweetened milk is added at this stage.

•    Refining
Here the paste once again goes under a row of five rollers, each spinning at a speed higher than the other, generating a cocoa paste that is thinner than the previous one.

•    Conching
Here the liquid chocolate is kept in a conching machine, for about a week(though some manufacturers prefer it for a lesser period of time) which will help to reduce the bitterness and,  enhance the smoothness of the chocolate.

•    Tempering
In this process, the liquid chocolate is transferred to tempering kettles. This is a challenging step in “how is chocolate made from cacao beans?” as  it is necessary to keep the chocolate in liquid form(with variable melting points of the different fats present). 

Tempering delivers the product which can be further adorned through molding as done with chocolate bars or through enrobing machines, if the purpose is for chocolate coating.

You have the much desired chocolate in hand and now enlightened with the procedure on “how is chocolate made from cacao beans?”, you can munch on every bite, taking you on a journey from the root to the fruit.

Photo Courtesy : patric-chocolate.com