The Utah State University Course: The Science of Chocolate

A couple days ago, I completed a college extension course. Here's how it all began. At the Northwest Chocolate Festival and UnConference, I met a student from Utah State University, and they showed us this course. It was called the Science of Chocolate. There were three parts in said course. The modules, as the course called them, were all videos of the professor in the food sciences department, Silvana Martini. The course takes you through all of the processes used at the Aggie Chocolate Factory to turn cacao beans into a piece of chocolate, all of the by-products, the farming methods, and a lot more.

After a couple days, after viewing the first two modules (I was only supposed to look at one), I discussed the content of the module covering farming, fermenting, harvesting, and drying with my good friend Anne via Zoom. She took the course as well, and we decided to be accountability buddies.

The next module, the one I wasn't supposed to view, covered how cacao beans are turned into cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and cocoa liquor. This one we still haven't discussed. There was a lot to be said on cocoa butter, because it is the solid fat in cacao beans, and as such, can add vital things to your chocolate and can also be used for many other purposes. There was a whole chapter on how fat in chocolate "blooms" and rises to the surface, in a process called tempering, which is covered in the next module.

The third and final module covered the many uses of cocoa butter and chocolate on the industrial scale, as well as tempering, conching, and refining methods. Tempering is a fascinating process in which you rapidly cool and heat your chocolate so that the fat in it crystallizes and becomes nice and shiny. There are six ways of crystallizing, and only two of them are correct.

There was also a chapter on polymorphism. Polymorphism in chocolate is the process of the fat changing to become more stable. There are six forms of cocoa butter, and the higher the number, the more stable it is. Form six is impossible to achieve through melting and cooling, so all chocolate will eventually polymorph. When the cocoa butter polymorphs, it will bloom, as the fat rises to the surface. The chocolate is still perfectly edible, it just does not look as sharp.

Here is my Certificate of Completion, marking the fact that I have successfully completed the course and passed the final exam.