How Are Chocolate Candy Bars Made

Chocolate candy bars provide energy, good taste and fun in every bite. You can purchase a chocolate candy bar in any food store or vending machine throughout the country. Chocolate bars run the gamut of plain milk chocolate to peanut-covered chocolate to special dark-chocolate bars. Yes, they're always there when we need them, but how are they made?

Cacao Trees

Chocolate comes from trees that grow in the tropical jungles of Brazil and other countries. The trees are called cacao trees. The fruit of this tree contains seeds called cocoa beans. The cocoa beans are hand harvested and placed in piles for a fermentation process that takes a week. After this time, the beans are shipped to candy factories for processing into chocolate candy bars.

Arrival at the Factory

Once the beans arrive at the factory they are cleaned and sorted by country of origin. Beans from different countries have a bit of a different taste so they must be blended together to create the taste the particular company wants. After blending the beans, they are roasted at high temperatures. Next, a special machine takes the dry roasted cocoa beans and separates the shell from the inside of the bean. The beans are then ground into a liquid, called chocolate liquor, which is pure chocolate.

Adding Ingredients

The chocolate is mixed with the other main ingredients, milk, cocoa butter and sugar. Then this mixture is dried into brown powder. Extra cocoa butter added to the brown powder aides in smoothing it. Then a large roller machine rolls the brown powder mixture to refine it and make it smooth. The resulting paste is cooled, also called tempering, until it has the right consistency and texture. It now looks like milk chocolate. One can add other ingredients such as peanuts during the tempering process or one can add them after the chocolate is put into molds. The special molds form the chocolate to the exact specification of that particular candy bar. The molds are sent on their final journey to completely cool and the liquid chocolate bar becomes a solid chocolate candy bar.

Wrapping

Once the candy cools completely and takes on its solid form, it goes to the wrapping machine where the machine wraps each bar individually. The wrapped bars are then packed into trucks or railroad cars to reach their final destination, the local food stores where they are sold and enjoyed by millions of consumers.

Tags: brown powder, cocoa beans, candy bars, chocolate candy, cocoa butter, milk chocolate, their final