Professor Emeritus Hiroshima University Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan
Abstract: Cocoa butter (CB) alternative fats (CBAs) have been developed to replace CB or to be blended with CB for chocolate production. To cope with consumers’ demands, fat technologists develop new types of CBAs for lowering production costs, improving physical properties and bloom resistances of chocolate, and decreasing the health risks of final product consumption, etc. For example, CBA-based chocolates with high heat resistance, zero-trans-fatty-acids, and low-saturated-fatty-acids may be of high interest. For this purpose, blending of different fats is one of the most promising and efficient techniques.
In this presentation, we discuss the fat blending for cocoa butter substitute (CBS) and cocoa butter replacer (CBR), both of which do not require tempering procedures before crystallization of compound-type chocolate. Firstly, we discuss the fat blending for CBS made of lauric-based CBS, CB and OSO, which contains 1,3-dioleoyl-2-stearoyl-triacylglycerol. In the ternary mixtures, the ratio of CB/OSO is 1:1, so that the mixture of CB/OSO is crystallized into the most stable beta-form of molecular compound crystals. The CBS/CB/OSO blend-based dark chocolates demonstrate that fat bloom can be prohibited completely and that the SFC values, hardness and crystallization rate are suitable for the production processes. Secondly, the fat blending for CBR formed by inter-esterification and solvent fractionation of palm oil (PO), fully-hydrogenated palm oil (FHPO), and palm kernel oil (PKO) is discussed. It becomes evident that no-trans CBR with partially lauric acid has high stability of beta-prime form containing 20% CB. Therefore, it can be concluded that the no-trans CBR with the blend of PO/FHPO/PKO is one of the solutions to replace trans-fat based CBRs.