Lesson Description & Goals

What is the difference between a chocolate bar you find in a supermarket and chocolate made by a fine chocolatier? If you don’t know how chocolate is made or processed or how to buy it, you can easily be fooled by marketers.

In this lesson, you will learn about the cacao tree and how cocoa beans are manufactured. You will learn about cocoa powder, dutching and cocoa butter. You will learn how chocolate is processed into varieties of dark, milk and white chocolate. By understanding the process, this will help you to better determine what quality chocolate is and what to look for when reading the ingredients on packages, as well as understanding what the percentage really means. Finally, you will learn how to judge and properly taste a variety of chocolates to find out which type of chocolate you prefer most.

• Understand where chocolate comes from
• Understand how cocoa beans are manufactured
• Understand what cocoa powder and cocoa butter are
• Understand the chocolate manufacturing process
• Understand how to read packaging labels to determine quality chocolate
• Identify characteristics of quality chocolate

Lesson Topic Videos

• Introduction to Chocolate (1:02)
• The Cacao Tree (1:27)
• How Cocoa Beans are Manufactured (1:45)
• What is Cocoa Powder? (1:34)
• What is Cocoa Butter? (1:11)
• Making Chocolate & Conching (3:02)
• How to Read Labels on Chocolate (4:14)
• How to Taste Quality Chocolate (3:05)

All Lessons in the Chocolate Section

• Basics of Quality Chocolate