The Aztecs considered chocolate to be an aphrodisiac, a rumour that accompanied chocolate to Europe in the 16th century. The drink quickly became popular, and soon chocolate houses appeared in Holland, France, England and Italy, among other places.<\/p>\n
![\"chokladfabrik\"](\"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/chokladfabrik-unsplash.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Discoveries and development<\/h2>\n
Chocolate was developed during the 19th century and new discoveries and products saw the light of day.<\/p>\n
The modern chocolate was born in 1828 when the Dutch chocolate manufacturer Coenraad Johannes van Houten came up with the method of squeezing a large part of the cocoa bean fat into cocoa butter \u2013 and then grinding the remainder into cocoa powder.<\/p>\n
The modern chocolate cake and praline was invented in 1847 in England by the company Joseph Fry & Sons. There they mixed cocoa butter, sugar and cocoa into a mass that solidified. Voila, the chocolate cake was born.<\/p>\n
In 1875, the Swiss Daniel Peter added condensed milk (made by Mr Nestl\u00e9) and thus the milk chocolate was invented.<\/p>\n
By the early 20th century, large chocolate companies had emerged and mass production was in full swing. Surely names like Tobler, Nestl\u00e9 and Lindt sound familiar?<\/p>\n
Some people love chocolate, others dedicate their lives to it.<\/h2>\n
If anyone knows how to make good chocolate without sugar, it\u2019s Roger Aidoo<\/a>.<\/p>\n He was born in Ghana, one of the world\u2019s most important producers of cocoa beans. He later studied nutrition and food science at university and then moved to Belgium where he took a master\u2019s degree in food technology.<\/p>\n \u2013 In Ghana, they know everything about cocoa beans, but not so much about chocolate. In Europe, much is known about chocolate making, but not much is known about cocoa beans. So I had the opportunity to combine my knowledge from both Africa and Europe, says Roger Aidoo.<\/p>\n Around the year 2010, sugar reduction began to come into play, but the sugar-free chocolate that existed at that time was not good. Roger Aidoo decided to create an optimal solution to replace sugar in chocolate.<\/p>\n \u2013 Making sugar-free chocolate is difficult, really difficult. What many don\u2019t think about is that sugar is the main component in chocolate. It adds not only sweetness but also texture and bulk. Sugar is like the building blocks of a house. If you remove them, everything falls apart, says Roger Aidoo.<\/p>\n So how to proceed if you want to replace sugar in chocolate? Roger worked on that issue as a doctoral student at his university in Belgium. For those who want to delve into the subject, there is one scientific article<\/a> that Roger Aidoo wrote about the topic (download pdf<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u2013 First, you have to find something that gives bulk to get the right texture on the chocolate. It must not be too thick and not too thin. Sugar also contributes to the viscosity of the chocolate, which must be taken into account. The best bulking agents I have found are inulin<\/em><\/a> and polydextrose<\/em><\/a> or a combination of both. There are other fibres as well, but you will always find them together with one of these two, says Roger Aidoo.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Inulin is a dietary fibre that is not absorbed by the small intestine but reaches the large intestine without releasing any energy. It lowers blood sugar levels and insulin levels and becomes food (prebiotics) for the good intestinal bacteria that are important for your intestinal flora.<\/p>\n Polydextrose is also a dietary fibre. It provides bulk, the right texture and mouthfeel that is often associated with sugar and fat. Polydextrose has been successfully implemented in a variety of foods, including chocolate and other confectionery.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n When you have found a good bulk with a nice texture, we come to sweetness. Here one must take into account that different sweeteners are covered by different rules in different parts of the world. Some are not allowed everywhere. Many sweeteners also have a bitter aftertaste or taste of liquorice.<\/p>\n \u2013 A common way to reduce sugar in chocolate is to use sugar alcohols, mainly maltitol<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> But some people are a little sensitive to sugar alcohols, it may cause flatulence and bloating. Therefore, you can\u2019t use too much sugar alcohols, just a pinch to bring up the sweetness. To really get the sweetness up, you need a high-intensity sweetener such as steviol glycosides<\/em><\/a>, says Roger Aidoo.<\/p>\n The name sugar alcohols is a bit misleading because they do not contain sugar nor alcohol. Sugar alcohols are a type of molecule that is similar to certain sugars, but where the oxygen atom that is double bonded to a carbon atom in the sugar molecule has been replaced by a hydroxyl group. Sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, isomalt, lactitol, erythritol, maltitol and polyglycitol syrup are sugar alcohols used as sweeteners.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2013 Different producers have different wishes, and therefore I don\u2019t always use maltitol but also other sugar alcohols such as erythritol<\/em><\/a> or xylitol<\/em>. However, the basic recipe consists of dietary fibres, sugar alcohols and steviol glycosides, says Roger Aidoo.<\/p>\n \u2013 When we did taste tests where participants got to taste chocolate with sugar and compared it with sugar-free chocolate, only 30 per cent could detect a difference, and many of them preferred the chocolate without sugar. When we did tests where the participants were only allowed to taste the sugar-free chocolate, very few could determine that it was sugar-free, says Roger Aidoo.<\/p>\n Wouldn\u2019t you like to make your own chocolate? First, you travel to a country where you will find cocoa trees. They thrive in warm climates with a lot of rain.<\/p>\n The largest cocoa-producing countries are Mexico, Brazil, Ghana, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Nigeria, Cameroon, Malaysia and Indonesia. Of these countries, Ghana and C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire produce the most. They account for close to half of all world production.<\/p>\n When you have travelled to any country and found a cocoa tree with yellow fruits (then they are ripe), you open the cocoa fruit and pick out the seeds. These seeds are called cocoa beans.<\/p>\n To produce one kilo of chocolate, barely 1000 cocoa beans are needed, which is equivalent to 25 cocoa fruits. A cocoa tree produces about 30 cocoa fruits a year.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n The author himself once had the privilege of doing just that. That time, they put the cocoa beans in their mouths and sucked in the good pulp around them, after which the cocoa beans were spat out on the ground.<\/p>\n Stop!<\/p>\n Pick up these precious cocoa beans immediately and leave them to ferment in the sun under a palm leaf for about a week. Then roast them at 100\u2013150 degrees for between 20 and 40 minutes.<\/p>\n Crush the roasted cocoa beans and blow off the skins. What is left is called cocoa nibs<\/em>.<\/p>\n A Tip! Cocoa nibs can be bought in stores if you want to jump straight to the next step in the process.<\/p>\n Mix the cocoa nibs into a cocoa mass. If you do this at home, you\u2019re finished by now. Mix with sugar and it\u2019s done. If you own a factory, go to the next step.<\/p>\n Set aside some of the cocoa mass. It may be as it is. The rest of the cocoa mass is further processed. It is fed into a press that squeezes out a large part of the fat. This fat is called cocoa butter. It is steamed in a vacuum so that it doesn\u2019t taste bad.<\/p>\n Criollo.<\/strong> Ah, the prince of cocoa beans. A rare and very expensive bean that you find mainly in Central America and the Caribbean. It has a lot of flavours and no bitterness. Stands for about 3 per cent of all production.<\/p>\n Forastero.<\/strong> The most common bean accounts for about 85 per cent of all production. Forastero trees are durable and give a great harvest. The bean has a strong and earthy cocoa taste.<\/p>\n Trinitario.<\/strong> Is a mixture of criollo and forastero and originally comes from Trinidad. It accounts for about 12 per cent of the entire production. The beans have a soft and strong cocoa taste.<\/p>\n The Nacional.<\/strong> A rare bean that accounts for 2 per cent of all production. It is the cocoa bean that has the longest ancestry. Its genetic line can be traced back over 5,000 years. Unfortunately, it is easily affected by diseases. It is also difficult to grow, but it has a nice taste.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n What is left of the cocoa mass is cooled and finely ground into cocoa powder. What is left of the cocoa bean now are three ingredients: cocoa butter, cocoa powder and the part of the cocoa mass that you put aside.<\/p>\n Now you can finally create what we all long for: chocolate. In the simplest basic recipe, you mix cocoa mass and cocoa butter with sugar. Clear!<\/p>\n You can also add cocoa powder to reduce the amount of sugar and make the chocolate darker. Chocolate with 80 per cent cocoa content and more, always comes with added cocoa powder. If you want to create milk chocolate, add milk powder. You get white chocolate by mixing cocoa butter and sugar (no cocoa mass) with milk powder.<\/p>\n From here, it is only the imagination that sets the limits.<\/p>\n Find out more about Roger Aidoo in the article series Bayn\u2019s heroes<\/em><\/a>. If you want to know more about the different ingredients mentioned in this article, we recommend the article series From Seed to Eureba<\/em><\/a> and Sugar Reduction in Practice<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Enjoy the reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chocolate is a beloved pleasure that we obviously do not want to be without. But creating good chocolate without sugar is not an easy match. Fortunately, there are enthusiasts like Roger Aidoo, chocolate expert and research leader at Bayn. In this article, he explains what it takes to replace the sugar in our chocolate cakes and pralines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":1118755,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[2736,2738,2315],"collection":[],"coauthors":[2333],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":1118761,"sv":1118747},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1118761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1118755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1118761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1118761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1118761"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=1118761"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1118761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Roger](\"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/roger-aidoo-portraett-workshop.jpg\")
The solution for sugar-free chocolate is completely natural<\/h2>\n
What about sweetness?<\/h2>\n
Taste tests that impress<\/h2>\n
![\"kakaobo\u0308nor-i-ha\u0308nder\"](\"https:\/\/baynsolutions.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/kakaobonor-i-hander-unsplash.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHow to make chocolate?<\/h2>\n
Cocoa nibs<\/h2>\n
Cocoa beans for the connoisseur<\/h3>\n
Three ingredients<\/h2>\n
Further reading!<\/h2>\n