On September 13, International Chocolate Day is celebrated. It is a very widespread product throughout the world and that we consume in many ways. Its texture, its flavor and even its aroma are characteristic of a product that has been with us for thousands of years.

Chocolate is obtained by mixing sugar with two seeds that appear from the manipulation of cocoa. From this combination of cocoa mass and cocoa butter, the different types of chocolate that are known appear, which can be used to eat alone or mixed in many recipes.

Chocolate production cycle

Currently the production of this food is concentrated in South American and African countries. Normally, due to the maturation of the cocoa pod, which requires about 4 to 6 months, there are two harvests a year, where all these seeds are used to create the sweet and flavored product that we know.

To get the chocolate bars that we all eat , a delicate process of collection, drying and care is necessary first so that it is not lost and maintains all its properties.

It is the farmers who are in charge of the cultivation of the cacao tree. The seeds that this tree produces are those that are used later for the elaboration of the final food.

These seeds are stacked in heaps where the pulp and cocoa beans are extracted , and they are kept for five days for fermentation. To preserve their characteristics, they are left in the sun to dry. These seeds are then roasted, a basic process for the chocolate flavor to form.

Once the process is ready, these beans are crushed in mills until they become a liquid mass of cocoa, and mixed with sugar and milk, where three basic types of chocolate are obtained that will then undergo different treatments to achieve purer and less pure flavors.

Refined and shell

Once this point is reached, the texture of the granular dough that is obtained becomes a smoother paste and the shell will arrive with which its flavor and fineness are harmonized.

The last two steps to obtain the product ready to drink are the cooling to crystallize and get different shapes and the molding that is carried out according to the shape we want, whether in chocolate, bonbon and other famous ways of presenting the product that already it would be, after a cooling period, ready to taste.