It has been discovered that the Olmec people, who settled in the Mexican lowlands, enjoyed chocolate as early as 1500 BC. It is assumed that chocolate was consumed in liquid form at that time. Now, let’s take a leap into the near past: people in the 19th century also drank chocolate, solid chocolate didn’t exist yet. But over the centuries, people have become more demanding. They were bothered by the layer of fat floating on their drink.
The Dutchman Van Houten developed a new process for this purpose at the beginning of the 19th century; he pressed the cacao beans and separated part of the cacao butter from the cacao. So there it was, the cacao butter. But what to do with it?
In 1847, the British company “J.S. Fry & Sons” realized that adding additional cacao butter (besides the cacao butter contained in the bean anyway) made it possible to produce a solid, homogeneous chocolate. Thanks to cacao butter, solid chocolate was invented and sales started to flourish. You see, chocolate is not a Swiss invention. Nevertheless, in 1875, the Swiss Daniel Peter created the first milk chocolate.
But back to cacao butter: Today, the production of solid chocolate is possible even without additional cacao butter, because the machines can grind finer and thus more fat can be released from the beans used. However, laflor and most other manufacturers still choose to add additional cacao butter, as this helps to create the perfect chocolate glaze. We source our cocoa butter from Biopartner (origin Dominican Republic). This butter is deodorized (physical process using steam to neutralize the flavor of the cacao butter) and therefore flexible to use. On the other hand, we use cacao butter from the Hacienda Limon, our partner cacao farm in Ecuador, for our white chocolate, which is made exclusively from cacao butter (no beans). This butter is not deodorized and therefore has its own unique character, which defines our white bar.
Not only is cacao butter of great importance in the process of origin of solid chocolate, it is also an excellent alternative for private use and is just as suitable as a frying butter as it is as a baking butter.
And yes, cacao butter and therefore all our dark chocolate are vegan 🙂