Dark Chocolate is one of my very favorite foods! Me and my husband joke that it should be listed as one of the main food groups! When I found out about my food allergies, and had to give up so many of the foods that I loved, I decided that I would find a way to continue to eat chocolate!
Our featured story is about, of course, Chocolate!! Keep reading to find out how chocolate is made.
How Chocolastic!
The 10 Best Vegan Dark Chocolate Bars
Adopting a plant-based lifestyle may mean “giving up” a few things, but chocolate certainly isn’t one of them.
Unfortunately, it seems that chocolate has become synonymous with milk chocolate. But in reality, pure dark chocolate (you know, the heart-healthy kind), is totally plant-based! Here’s a quick primer on how most commercially available chocolate is made:
- Cacao pods are harvested from cacao trees growing throughout the tropics.
- The beans from inside those pods are then placed in earthen pits or wooden bins, covered with banana leaves, and left to ferment.
- After fermentation, the beans are dried in the sun for about a week.
- Dried beans are shipped to a factory, where they are first sifted and roasted.
- The beans are then cracked and winnowed, leaving the bitter but edible cacao nibs.
- The nibs are crushed and ground into a thick paste called chocolate liquor. Chocolate liquor has a strong, bitter taste, and a grainy texture.
- To make what we know as chocolate, manufacturers then add sugar, cocoa butter and vanilla, yielding a sweet but still grainy mixture.
- Finally, manufacturers run the mixture through a series of steel rollers to refine the texture, and may add more cocoa butter and soy lecithin.
READ FULL STORY — including their list of the top ten favorite chocolate bars!
More links to articles on chocolate: Choose Dark Chocolate for Heart Health
And it you love to make Gluten Free Vegan Chocolate dishes, check out the Amazing Gluten Chocolate Book
Great place to buy high quality dark chocolate: Gnosis Chocolate