ice cream

Food Structure

Dark chocolate is a mixture of cocoa solids and sucrose in a fatty dispersion that is primarily composed of cocoa butter (CB). However, to achieve various technological and economic goals, many types of chocolate and chocolate coatings produced today contain a mixture of CB and other vegetable fats, which may lead to unexpected physical properties in the final product. The objective of this work was to assess the physical and chemical effects of the use of alternative fats, such as cocoa butter substitutes (CBS) and cocoa butter equivalents (CBE), in dark chocolate. Chocolate was stored under ideal conditions for 100 days at 20 °C or under temperature cycling with six cycles of 20 °C/33 °C, and fat bloom formation was assessed using the following measurements: whiteness index, microstructure, melting behavior, and polymorphism. Under ideal storage conditions, no differences were observed between chocolate made with pure CB and chocolates made with alternative fats. However, when the same types of chocolate were exposed to temperature fluctuations, they differed in resistance to fat bloom formation. Pure chocolate made with CB was less resistant and showed the first signs of fat bloom as early as the third cycle, chocolate made with CBS showed signs of fat bloom only at the sixth cycle, and chocolate made with CBE did not show signs of fat bloom formation.

Temperature, time and fat composition effect on fat bloom formation in dark chocolate