chocolatecocoasugar
Very simple question. I bought some roasted cocoa seeds and tasted them, they have a slight "bitter" flavour and not "sweet" as I imagined when I was a kid.
Now, chocolate is made by adding sugar to the cacao powder (obtained from the seeds). I am wondering if there are any varieties of "cacao plants" that produce naturally sweet cacao :).
The magic emulsifier is probably soy lecithin.
According to Wikipedia:
It is used commercially in foods requiring a natural emulsifier or lubricant. In the food industry it has multiple uses: In confectionery it reduces viscosity, replaces more expensive ingredients, controls sugar crystallization and the flow properties of chocolate, helps in the homogeneous mixing of ingredients, improves shelf life for some products, and can be used as a coating.
The magic soluble is probably a hydrochloride:
Converting insoluble amines into hydrochlorides is a common way to make them water- and acid-soluble
When making chocolate the cocoa beans are fermented, roasted, and crushed/ground. They are then sent through huge presses that separate the cocoa butter from the cocoa powder.
Chocolate is cocoa butter that has been emulsified with varying quantities of powder and usually a ton of sugar and sometimes milk. The rolling of the chocolate with the butter to enhance the texture is called conching.
Cocoa powder will dissolve in liquid if you mix it into enough sugar beforehand- this is how chocolate drink mixes are made.
Additionally chocolate is smooth and creamy because of the unique properties of cocoa butter. It can be tempered to form crystals that are solid at room temperature but melt at body temperature. This makes them smooth and melt in your mouth.
Another reason, besides unwholesome quantities of sugar, why cocoa powder is more harsh tasting than chocolate, is that chocolate has often been dutch processed where cocoa powder often hasn't.
Cocoa is naturally acidic and harsh tasting. Adding some alkalinity to balance its pH makes it much softer tasting- and darker in color.
You can buy dutch processed cocoa powder. Remember that some recipes need to be altered to use it- for example if the recipe called for baking soda you would have to use baking powder instead to maintain the correct pH.
Best Answer
The fleshy party of the fruit of theobroma cacao is is supposed to be sweet and pleasant. However, it does not taste like chocolate.
Chocolate is made from the nibs or seeds within the fruit of theobroma cacao, after it is fermented ground, and processed, and is in no way sweet.
The nibs themselves are very low in sugar, and contain alkaloids (such as caffeine or theobromine) which are bitter. This probably evolved to discourage predation or disease to the seeds themselves.
This is very similar to the way peach kernels (the seed within the pits) are not terribly sweet, although they certainly grow within a fruit that is.
So no—there is no such thing as naturally sweet chocolate.
A related tree, Cupuaçu (theobroma grandiflorum) is cultivated more specifically for its fruits, which are sweet and said to taste something like pineapple. Again, the fleshy fruit is not analogous to the seed which eventually becomes chocolate.