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Innovations in chocolate
HOW ARE FOOD TECHNOLOGISTS BRINGING THIS HOUSEHOLD FAVOURITE INTO THE FUTURE?
Reduced sugar
Though it’s what we love about the taste of chocolate, its sweetness and high sugar content means it is not a particularly healthy snack choice. The desire for ‘healthy’ chocolate has inspired chocolate manufacturer Nestlé to produce a ‘structured sugar’, reducing their sugar content in chocolate by as much as 40 per cent.
Spraying milk, sugar and water into warm air produces a substance similar to the sugar used to make cotton candy. The structured sugar is more porous than typically used sugars and therefore dissolves on the tongue faster.
Rather than simply reduce the amount of sugar in chocolate, Nestlé has engineered the sugar crystals to form in a different way to reduce their presence even more. The company has recently used this method to create their Milkybar Wowsomes treats, the first of many that will contain less sugar.
Heat-resistant chocolate
Back in 2012, Cadbury developed a new type of chocolate that could tolerate the temperature of warmer climates. This chocolate can withstand temperatures up to 40 degrees Celsius for three hours thanks to a change in the conching stage of production that further decreases the size of the sugar particles within the chocolate.
Since 2012 many manufacturers have gone on to develop different ways to help prevent sticky chocolate fingers. One of them is snack company Mondelez, who have patented a technique for producing heat-tolerant chocolate using surfactants mixed in during the conching process. Surfactants, or surface-active agents, allow the chocolate to maintain its shape when exposed to higher temperatures.
Ruby chocolate
Though there is a myriad of flavours of chocolate on the market, at the basic level there are three types of chocolate: milk, white and dark. However, in 2017 chocolate masters at Barry Callebaut created a fourth type of chocolate with a pink finish.
Without the addition of any colourings or fruit flavours, this new type of chocolate is made from ruby cocoa beans to give its unique pink colour and fruity taste. The method of its production is shrouded in mystery.
3D-printed chocolate
3D printing is revolutionising nearly every aspect of production that we see today, and it is now being used for new culinary creations. In the same way plastics are printed in layers from computer-aided design (CAD) software, chocolate can be put through a printer to create customisable goodies.
To do this, tempered chocolate is loaded into a syringe and continually heated to around 30 degree Celsius while the printing is carried out, thereby maintaining its semi-fluid state. As the chocolate hits the plate it begins to cool at around 20 degrees Celsius, with each layer drying as the next one forms on top.