all about chocolate and cacao
on the shelf
What is the shelf-life of chocolate?
Long! A good rule- thumb-dark chocolate lasts one year, milk chocolate 6 months. Chocolate lasts long because it contains no water which makes the environment unfavorable for bacteria to grow in. Most food producers will be cautious with their best-before-dates, so their best-before-dates may be shorter than what we’ve mentioned here.
If chocolate stills smells and tastes good it should be fine.
And cacao? Ground cacao powder can be kept for up to 3 years. And dried cacao beans even longer, when stored in a cool and dark place and covered in a tin or jar, it can keep for up to 5 years! It will start to lose their potency and flavor but will rarely go off.
What’s in it?
Is chocolate gluten and lactose free?
Gluten free, usually. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley and rye and not in cocoa beans. So if the chocolate or cocoa only contains cocoa and sugar, it is gluten and probably lactose free. Most chocolate makers do not work in sterile environments so cannot guarantee that there will be traces of these foods in their chocolate or cocoa. Best thing is to read the ingrediënt labels of each product carefully.
Stay cool
Should I keep my chocolate in the fridge?
NO! Unless you live in the tropics and have no other way of keeping chocolate cool. Keeping chocolate in the fridge, can mess with the temper, creates condensation on chocolate and it can absorb odours from other foods. 18-20ºC is the ideal temperature to keep a bar of chocolate, but it will actually be fine at a temperature of up to 27ºC. Just keep it out of the sun.
To temper or not to temper
What is chocolate tempering?
Tempering is an important process in chocolate making, done by heating up and cooling the chocolate. The tempering process, when done correctly, gives chocolate a glossy finish and distinctive “snap” sound when breaking a piece. Sometimes when you open a bar of chocolate it has a whiteish or brownish patchy appearance resembling mouldness. Usually this merely means that the chocoalte has gone out of temper (the cyrstals inside the chocolate have reorganized themselves in an unfavourable manner) and happens when chocolate is subject to extreme temperature changes.
The smell
Why are you called mells like chocolate and how do you get the whole neighbourhood to smell like it?
In choosing our store’s name we simply copied what most visitors say when they first come to the area of “Smells like chocolate”. Many ask us how we manage to fill the whole neighbourhood with that chocolate aroma. We sometimes are tempted to spin a yard, but truthfully- the smell comes from our neighbouring factory Olam, a cacao plant, who is busy roasting and grinding cacao day and night.
Cocoa or cacao?
Do these two terms mean the same thing?
Cacao generally refers to the fruit, the pod and beans as raw material and cocoa refers to the powder, or a drink made from the powder, however.. that’s in English. In Italian, its one word “cacao” for cocoa and cacao, in Spanish and Portuguese it cacau, in Swahili, Ukrainian, Turkish it’s kakao and there are many other interesting words used the world over- kawkaw, kookaha, kokoo. Conclusion- most of the world gets it when you say cacao.
