Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Products per se – or processes of preparing or treating... – Plant material is basic ingredient other than extract,...
Patent
1997-09-16
1999-11-23
Paden, Carolyn
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Products per se, or processes of preparing or treating...
Plant material is basic ingredient other than extract,...
426660, A23G 100
Patent
active
059896191
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a process for the manufacture of reduced fat chocolate.
Chocolate is a food with high fat and high energy contents. Milk chocolate, for example, has a fat content varying widely in the range of 27 to 40 wt %, but more typically contains about 31 wt % of fat and has an assimilable total energy content of about 530 kcal/100 g of which the fat content contributes more than 50%. Internationally accepted nutritional guidelines propose that fat should provide no more than 30% to 35% energy.
In theory, reduction in the fat content of chocolate can be simply achieved by reducing the amount of fat ingredients (such as cocoa butter or milk fat) or of fat-containing ingredients (such as cocoa liquor, milk powder or hazelnut) to be mixed with other chocolate-making ingredients to form the chocolate composition. There are, however, technical restraints on fat reduction in chocolate compositions. Chocolate compositions need to be processed in liquid form. Because the continuous liquid phase of such chocolate compositions is the fat phase, the lower the fat content, the more the viscosity increases, thus making it increasingly difficult to process. One of the important processing steps for making chocolate is a flavour-developing step which is traditionally referred to as "conching". This is a time consuming step and alternative flavour-developing steps can be used which involve intimate mixing or kneading of the liquid chocolate ingredients. As the fat content is reduced, the conching or other flavour-developing step becomes increasingly difficult, resulting in less flavour development. Additionally, the reduction in fat available to coat the ingredients, notably sugar, leads to chocolate of inferior mouthfeel.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
One way of overcoming this problem in the manufacture of chocolate compositions having a reduced fat-derived energy content is to substitute the cocoa butter and/or other metabolisable fat content of the chocolate by partially or wholly non-metabolisable fats. This technique is disclosed, for example, in EP-A-0285187, EP-A-0285187 and EP-A-0495553 and enables the fat content to be maintained at a level sufficient to permit processing. However, the use of certain of these non-metabolisable fats in chocolate can lead to anal leakage which is likely to limit acceptability by consumers. The effective calorific content of partially or wholly non-metabolisable fats within the body is uncertain.
Other ways of reducing the fat-derived energy content of chocolate involve initial formulation of chocolate having a low fat content wherein the particle size of the solid particles, particularly the sugar particles, is controlled so as to avoid as far as possible the presence of ultrafine particles, since it is these ultrafine particles which increase the viscosity and require increasing amounts of fat to coat the particles. Thus, in the case of milk chocolate, it is known that at least about 50% of the surface area of the particles in milk chocolate is produced by the presence of particles below 2 .mu.m in size. Various proposals have been made for screening out such ultrafine particles. U.S. Pat. No. 5,080,923 discloses a process which involves first reducing granulated nutritive carbohydrate sweetener for use in the composition to a particle size required for the finished product specification by various methods including milling and roll refining. Either before or after size reduction, the nutritive carbohydrate sweetener is blended with fat, i.e. cocoa butter. At this point, water is blended into the mixture so as to dissolve the ultrafines (particles below 10 .mu.m) and the angular and jagged edges of the larger particles. The mixture is then dried. In WO 94/09649, emulsifier is included with the water when dissolving the ultrafine particles. However, we have found that it is difficult to dry the mixture following such water treatment.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved m
REFERENCES:
patent: 2760867 (1956-08-01), Kempf et al.
patent: 5776534 (1998-07-01), Tremblay
patent: 5882709 (1999-03-01), Zambe
Sanders Nigel
Zumbe Albert
Cadbury Schweppes Plc
Paden Carolyn
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