• Researchers at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, have developed a way to check whether cocoa butter crystallizes correctly during the tempering process, using ultrasound.
Producing a chocolate with a shiny, crunchy surface that melts in your mouth and retains its color throughout its shelf life is an art. For this, close inspection of the cocoa butter crystallization process is essential.
Thus, a team of researchers from the Belgian University investigated the tempering process, using an ultrasonic technique, to ensure that the cocoa butter crystallizes properly during the heating and cooling stage of the chocolate.
Ultrasound for tempering chocolate
"In the process of tempering chocolate, only 5 types of stable crystals (of one cocoa) can be formed. However, only one of these remains stable over time, ensuring the final product the desired characteristics. The number and size of the crystals play an essential role," says Imogen Foubert, specialist in fat crystallization in the university's department of microbiology and molecular systems.
"Using ultrasound helps detect differences in the crystallization stage of cocoa butter", concludes Professor Koen Van Den Abeele, an ultrasound specialist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The new technique therefore involves the use of ultrasound streams directed at the cocoa butter. Researchers measure the reflection of these waves, thus obtaining information about the structure.
This method can be used during the crystallization process, compared to current methods, by rigorously monitoring the working temperatures or the finished product after the production step has ended. Through this technique, it is possible to act more quickly to correct possible deficiencies, which appeared during the production processes.
The researchers have also developed a laboratory prototype for this purpose. The present results were obtained using cocoa butter, to be confirmed also on tests with chocolate.
At the moment, chocolate tempering machines constitute the safest way of working, they guarantee absolute control over the chocolate tempering process, without any effort on the part of the chocolatier or confectioner, because during the melting-cooling process, the temperatures are rigorously controlled in order to obtain optimal results.
Thus, the conditions are ensured, mandatory and necessary for working with chocolate but also for the creation of finished products with a shiny surface, having the quality of being crunchy, which melt easily in the mouth and retain their appearance throughout the period of validity, under conditions of proper storage.
Read more on the Arta Albă website: Chocolate processing (1)
