Chocolate, what's it made of and how?
 
It grows on trees you'll be pleased to know.

 Chocolate starts life as a collection of beans in a pod, the fruit of the cocoa tree. These are removed, fermented, sun dried, sorted and bagged up for export to the manufactures for final production.
They only grow in tropical rain forests and that seems a very good reason to protect them!

The manufactures then roast the beans followed by de-shelling and grinding. This grinding turns the chocolate in to a paste called chocolate liquor.

This liquor is compressed to remove any liquids known as cocoa butter, the resulting solid is pure cocoa powder.

From here on in, blending, rolling and mixing produces all the variants we have come to know so well, it is a far more complicated business that I have explained here, but you get the idea.
  For those that crave more detail - carry on down
 

The cocoa bean grows on trees, or perhaps more to the point, it grows out of the side of the tree.
Now, normally tree fruit would grow at the ends of the branches but not the cocoa tree, these pods sprout out the trunk itself (and lower branches).

The tree itself is very fussy, it likes to grow in shaded areas, preferably in the shade of a taller tree, those grown on large plantations don't produce as much quality fruit, some companies will mark their product as 'shade grown'.

When the pod is harvested it is split open to reveal around 30 to 40 beans in a white pulp which is hand scooped out and transported to large wooden fermenting bins or piled up and covered with banana leaves. fermentation is what helps to produce that chocolate taste, this can last for several days.

Next the beans are sun dried and turned before bagging and shipping out.
  Manufacture


When the sacks of beans arrive at the manufactures they are first cleaned up (removal of twigs, leaves, stones, dead bodies etc) and inspected and then on to the roasting ovens. Some manufacturers roast with the shells on, others without. The roasting can be critical dependant on the coca variety and size.

Next is the removal of the outer shell, this can be done using rotating drums or 'shooting' the beans at a metal plate to shatter the beans, the broken results are sifted to remove the shell, the remaining broken up beans are referred to a 'nibs'.

Now the grinding begins. The nibs will now be ground between milling wheels in a similar fashion to flour, the friction involved turns the nibs in to a thick but fluid paste called chocolate liquor, it contains no alcohol by the way, it's not that sort of liquor!

 
           

Here's a picture of some bars of chocolate just to remind you what we're talking about!
           
  The paste is then feed in to cylinders and pressed under extreme pressure to remove all the moisture, this expelled liquid is known as cocoa butter and it doesn't go to waste.

The remaining solid is what's now called 'cocoa solids' and is in the form of a hard compressed cake, this is pure cocoa and the base for all chocolate.