Cocoa Powder – really good cocoa powder – is an ingredient which deserves greater consideration and use in confectionery than it possibly gets at the moment. It has a flavour of its own and comes in a range of colours and flavour intensities with great potential.
Using cocoa powder within the product range presents another opportunity to identify your brand to the consumer and make it memorable.
Cocoa powder generally comes in either low fat (about 11% cocoa butter) or high fat (about 22% cocoa butter) with the latter having a much superior flavour. The various colours (red shades being the most valued) and flavours are largely created by variations in the alkalisation process during manufacture although there are also limitations imposed by the source and primary processing of the cocoa bean used. There are also powders manufactured in such a way as to give excellent dispersion and suspension in liquids and many are also produced in lecithinated form.
It is important to emphasise the difference between “by product” powders and those manufactured deliberately with defined properties. There are as yet few powders with an “origin” label as there are for chocolates, but there is no reason why this cannot be done.
Because there is a greater demand for the fat component of cocoa beans (for use in chocolate) than for the non-fat solids a substantial amount of cocoa bean is processed solely for its fat content with little attention being paid to the quality of the residual solids. Much inferior quality bean is also processed solely for cocoa butter as most off flavours can be removed by deodorising. Powders from these sources – which I refer to as “by product” – are rarely of consistent quality or of outstanding flavours, although some are certainly sold in a branded form.
High quality powders with a range of closely defined colours and flavours are manufactured from specific blends of cocoa beans treated with alkalis under various closely controlled conditions. After roasting, winnowing and grinding the beans, the resulting cocoa mass is pressed to remove surplus cocoa butter followed by grinding of the press cakes and controlled cooling to produce a fine, high quality powder.
High quality cocoas made to a specific profile can add not just colour and flavour to confectionery, but used with care they can add a hint of bitterness and astringency to products, cutting through sweetness and making products more desirable and interesting.
There are real product opportunities for businesses which can develop ideas using high quality cocoa powders as major and minor ingredients.
Chocolate Beverages
An obvious addition to a product line is a really individual, high quality chocolate drink with relatively low sugar content. Most of the “drinking chocolate” products widely available are pretty ordinary and the opportunity certainly exists for a high quality product with a high cocoa solids content and perhaps some appropriate subtle flavours (perhaps cassia, cinnamon, ginger, and similar as well as high quality vanilla) to make the product “adult” and individual. There may even be a market for a young adult product incorporating something more polarised such as chilli.
Another addition which could be beneficial to the product would be a small amount of a thickening agent to make it more satisfying and “creamy” when in the mouth. This effect can also be achieved by adding mallows to the product and a further opportunity exists providing a range of adult flavoured mallows to “customise” the product
Chocolates
Adding even small amounts of powders to existing chocolates needs to be done with great care to ensure complete dispersion and avoid the consumer coming across powdery aggregates. This will require careful shearing and mixing possibly over a lengthy period and potentially using a lecithinated cocoa.
Most small to medium confectionery businesses buy their chocolate ready made from one of the large producers and even those which make some of their own are limited by the size of batch and number of different products it is practical to manufacture. Using this technique it is possible to “modify” fairly standard chocolates to make them stand out and develop a preference in the consumer’s mind.
White chocolates in particular can be extremely bland, sweet and rather anonymous unless they are produced with very high quality cocoa butters, which is comparatively rare. Addition (and very efficient dispersion) of a very small amount of high quality cocoa powder (probably less than 1%) can transform a bland white chocolate into something quite special, particularly if other suitable and compatible background flavours are used to complement it. Whilst it will no longer be a true “white” chocolate it will be a more interesting product.
This approach can be equally effective in small moulded bars, where there is a real opportunity for premium branding, and in assortments where it becomes beneficial to complement or contrast the flavour of the coating with the flavour of the centre.
There is certainly a consumer interest in milk chocolates which have a more distinctive flavour and a higher cocoa content. A similar approach to that of white chocolate may be used, enhancing an otherwise fairly bland and “centre of the road” milk chocolate. Adding perhaps 2% of a fine flavoured cocoa powder with a trace of some other flavour can make both moulded and filled milk chocolates much more distinguished and identifiable by the consumer. In addition this technique can greatly simplify manufacturing operations for those who do produce their own products, by allowing a good quality base chocolate to be modified in relatively small batches to provide a flexible range of products.
Even straightforward commercial dark chocolates, which in the UK often have a fairly high sugar content, can be improved, particularly if a really high quality powder is used.
In all of these cases adding other appropriate and complementary flavours can further complement the addition of cocoa powder.
Panned Goods
It is of course common practice to dust panned products with cocoa powder. However with a little thought and experimentation the effect can be made much more interesting by combining various centres, chocolates and perhaps complementary, quite individually flavoured “origin” powders into original and premium products.
Nougatines
Cocoa powders can be used to enhance and add value to both soft and hard Nougatines. Cocoa can be added to the mass and will provide interesting flavours and reduced sweetness; it can also be added as discrete layers to add some visual impact.
Nougatines sweetness and protein notes make it particularly suitable for combining with cocoa to make almost a “solid chocolate” product, potentially a less messy option to true chocolate in summer.
Mallows
More adult flavours in mallows have often been considered but recently there has have been real interest in this sector. An opportunity here may be for an assortment featuring some different cocoas with (perhaps) coffee and some spice flavours.
Compressed Products
This is a completely unexplored area as far as I am aware, but one which may be interesting. Within the pharmaceutical industry there are many tablet formulations which are “chewable” and which rapidly disperse in the mouth in a reasonably pleasant manner.
Adding high quality cocoa, sugar and possibly milk powder to this chewable formulation could produce a pleasant cocoa/chocolate flavoured product which could be produce and packed quite cheaply on fairly basic equipment. It would not have the heat sensitivity of normal chocolate and whilst it would not really “substitute” for chocolate it could have many opportunities in situations where conventional chocolate is not viable.
Other Products
Combining cocoa powders with non-chocolate, hence generally water based products is potentially difficult and needs care and attention to product development and stability because of the dangers of microbiological problems and the development of atypical flavours.
Cocoa powders are remarkably sensitive to the effects of heat, moisture and other ingredients during processing. Undesirable flavour notes such as “stale” hessian” “liquorice” (describing flavours is notoriously difficult, these are just examples I have encountered) are easily created by careless addition and processing.
Although there is often a need to disperse and mix in powders very thoroughly they should be added at as late a stage of production as possible and can, for example, be added as a thin layer in some products, delaying flavour release and so complementing the basic flavour of the product.
Whilst probably only practical on a modest scale (an advantage for small producers) it may be interesting to deposit suitably flavoured jellies and foams into cocoa powder (or powder dusted silicone moulds with final solids depositing) rather than starch or to steam products after destarching and to dust them with powder while sticky.
Conclusion
High quality cocoa powder, thoughtfully and creatively used presents an opportunity to manufacturers to make their products differentiated from competitors and preferred by the consumer. In addition some innovative thinking could bring to market some novel and interesting products which the consumer may find attractive.
Cocoa is not a particularly expensive ingredient and there are a wide variety of different colours and flavours available which presents many opportunities.