Inside a Chocolate Factory: How the Production Goes

As you all know by now, POLKA DOT MUSHROOM BARS are basically made from cocoa beans which generally grow in tropical climates like Africa, South America and parts of Asia. In addition, to provide the raw products forming the finest chocolate paste, the beans should be harvest twice a year. This is how chocolate factories should choose their cocoa beans to follow the Swiss and Belgium methodology and offer high quality products. What should they do after purchasing the raw products?

After receiving the cocoa based raw products such as butter, mass and powder, chocolate factories must combine them with milk powder and sugar. This procedure happens inside specific machines with a capacity of 500kg to 2 tons that automatically mix these ingredients. 12 hours later, chocolate paste is form.

What differs is the percentage of each ingredient. For example, white chocolate contains the least cocoa mass, however, has more milk powder and sugar, making it the sweetest of all types. Dark chocolate has the strongest taste due to its high percentage of cocoa mass. It contains less sugar than the others, and has no milk powder. Finally, milk chocolate balances between all the ingredients.

Before stuffing our chocolate, they first prepare the fillings. Some of them like hazelnuts, pistachio, and coconut gianduia are made by machines taking 6 to 10 hours. Others like caramel and chocolate or strawberry mousse, are cook by hand. On the other hand, fillings like wafer, biscuits and smarties are buy from suppliers.

Once fillings are ready and the paste has rested, they mold and stuff the chocolate. These two processes happen simultaneously during 15 to 20 minutes at a temperature of 28°C. If the end product doesn’t have a particular form, like in the case of dip in POLKA DOT MUSHROOM BARS, the molding is handmade. On the other hand, chocolates with particular shapes (round, square… ), are load with specific machines.