The main raw material of chocolate is cocoa beans. Cocoa powder is made by grinding cocoa beans into powder, which is not easy to disperse and precipitate in hot water. You can stir it with a small amount of hot water to make the powder swell. Besides cocoa beans, we usually buy chocolate raw materials, including milk, nuts, sugar, cocoa butter, food additives and so on.

Chocolate is the most classic representative of cocoa products, but many chocolates are made of a lot of cocoa butter or cocoa butter substitutes, a lot of sugar and syrup, and milk powder. Chocolate can be divided into many kinds, such as dark chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, sandwich chocolate, etc. Among them, the milk and sugar components in dark chocolate are relatively low, so the fragrance of cocoa it contains is purer than other kinds of chocolate.

Shelf life of chocolate

Generally, the shelf life of packaged chocolates we buy outside is about one year, and it will be much shorter if it is handmade chocolate. Handmade chocolate has a short storage time because there is not enough preservative added. If it is summer, it may break down in a few days, and it will be a little longer in winter, 1 month or so.

Try not to put chocolate directly in the refrigerator, it will affect the taste of chocolate. Commercial chocolate can be divided into two types: pure chocolate (dark chocolate) and compound chocolate (chocolate made instead of cocoa butter). The shelf life of pure chocolate is generally 2 years, and the shelf life of compound chocolate is about 1 year.