The Oracle staff explains your favorite part of Valentine’s Day.

How Chocolate Is Made

The main ingredient in chocolate, the cacao bean, can be extracted from cacao pods or cacao trees.

When the pods ripen, they are taken off the tree and the outer shells are removed. The cacao beans are taken out and are left in boxes to ferment. During fermentation, the beans shrivel and lose some of their bitter taste. The beans are then sun-dried and taken to chocolate factories, where they are roasted to bring out the “chocolate flavor.” After roasting, the beans’ thinner shells are removed. Seed bits, or nibs, are crushed and liquefied into a paste or chocolate liquor (don’t get too excited—it contains no alcohol).

From there, cocoa butter is squeezed out from some of the paste; the remaining cocoa solid is pounded into cocoa powder. The cocoa butter can be mixed into dark or milk chocolate or be used to make white chocolate. The mixture is then refined for different amounts of time depending on the type of chocolate. The longer the refining time, the smoother the chocolate will be.

The refined paste is kneaded and churned, allowing more of the bitterness to evaporate. It is then tempered to give it a glossy look. The tempered chocolate is shipped to manufacturers who use the chocolate for flavoring in foods. To create chocolate candy, the liquid substance is poured into molds, cooled, wrapped and shipped to stores.

Types of Chocolate

Milk Chocolate:

Chocolate that is at least 10 percent chocolate liquor with milk solids, sugar and vanilla (flavoring).

Milk chocolate tends to taste sweeter and have a much richer flavor than dark chocolate.

Dark Chocolate:

Considered a sweet chocolate: chocolate that is 15 to 34 percent chocolate liquor

Semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate: contains 35 to 99 percent chocolate liquor with cocoa butter, vanilla and sugar (less than 12 percent milk solids)

Unlike milk and white chocolate, dark chocolate can usually be stored for long periods of time because it does not contain milk solids. Dark chocolate is the most bitter because it contains the most chocolate liquor.

White Chocolate:

White chocolate is not technically chocolate because it contains no chocolate liquor; it consists of cocoa butter, milk, sugar and vanilla. If white “chocolate” contained any chocolate liquor, it wouldn’t be white. When buying white chocolate, make sure cocoa butter, and not vegetable oil, is one of the ingredients because cocoa butter gives chocolate its smooth texture. Because of its milk and butter components, white chocolate tastes very creamy and milky.

Stores

The classic place to shop is See’s Candies located at 4844 El Camino Real, Los Altos, CA 94022. But to see chocolate in motion, visit Ghirardelli Square located at 900 North Point St., San Francisco, CA 94109.