Chocolates are natural food products offering the consumer wonderful taste sensations and aromas no other product can provide. It is attractively presented and skillfully crafted so the flavor of the chocolate is complemented by natural and fresh ingredients.
Some chocolate factories in the Middle East produce chocolate in a commercial way and others deliver to you their own homemade chocolate. How does the production happen in these two types of factories?
1- Cocoa Beans VS Cocoa butter
Chocolate is a processed, typically sweetened food, produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Therefore, cocoa beans (or cacao beans), from which fine chocolate is produced, grow in the tropical climates of Africa, South America and parts of Asia and are harvested twice a year to produce the raw products that makes chocolate. On the other hand, there is also the cocoa butter substitute that replaces the real cocoa beans and helps in the production. Which one gives you the best chocolate? Without any doubt: the natural cocoa beans. Some factories use the cocoa butter substitutes instead of cocoa beans for a simple reason; to elevate its melting point that makes it loose it natural attribute.
2- Natural VS artificial ingredients
The difference between homemade chocolate and commercial chocolate is in the ingredients used. Homemade chocolate is made with natural and high quality ingredients with no artificial preservatives, therefore it stays fresh. As for the commercial, it is made with artificial ingredients and preservatives to keep a low cost and of course, it won’t stay fresh too long.
3- Production cost
A chocolate factory can keep a lower cost of production with the use of old, antique machinery and technology. Homemade chocolate factories don’t need to lower their costs to higher their profits but rely on handing over the best quality and maintain high level of hygiene using high-end machinery and new technologies to meet the ISO Certification standards.
4- Chocolate filling ingredients
This 4th difference relates to the 2nd one – the natural ingredients. We separated them to differentiate between the production of chocolate itself and the fillings that represent the flavors. Commercial chocolate is filled with artificial flavors using syrup or chemically made pistachio, almonds and other fillings, but homemade chocolate, as you guessed, uses natural pistachio, coconuts and other fillings to create a sweet taste.
5- All the above
The 5th and last difference we will mention in this article is somehow a conclusion to all that has been said before. To give you the best chocolate, a factory must follow all the criteria above and produce their product from A to Z, which means starting by making their own chocolate paste and continue with all the procedure until the end-product which is not the case of commercial chocolate, who get their paste from an external provider, probably without knowing if artificial ingredients were used instead of natural ones.
After reviewing with you 5 differences between commercial and homemade chocolate, it’s up to you to choose what kind of chocolate you would aim for from now on. Don’t be fooled by the heavenly tasty commercial chocolate, real ingredients, better quality and high level of hygiene are more important than taste, which directly implies to a better taste.
“We measure life not in years, but in the sweetness of everyday happenings; of sweet memories, sweet people, sweet dreams and sweet chocolate.”- Crystal Chocolatier Factory