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,...
Reexamination Certificate
1997-08-25
2001-10-02
Paden, Carolyn (Department: 1761)
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,...
C426S630000, C426S593000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06296891
ABSTRACT:
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% by weight, but more typically contains about 31% by weight of fat and has an assimilable total energy content of about 530 kcal/100 g of which the fat content provides more than 50%. Internationally accepted nutritional guidelines propose that fat should provide no more than 30% to 35% energy.
In good quality chocolate, there is a continuous fat phase which coats all the solid particles and fills the voids between them. 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”.
Traditional conching 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 is disclosed, for example, in EP-A-0285187, EP-A-0285187 and EP-A-0495553. This 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. These ultrafine particles require large amounts of fat to coat them and thus cause an increase in the viscosity, thereby making processing difficult. 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 &mgr;m in size. Various proposals have been made for removal of ultrafine particles. U.S. Pat. No. 5080923 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 &mgr;m) and the angular and jagged edges of the larger particles. The mixture is then dried with the sweetener crystals acting as nuclei for recrystallisation. The result is that there is an overall reduction in surface area of up to 50%. However, as some agglomerates now exceed the upper specified particle size limit (about 50 &mgr;m) required for ensuring the desired mouthfeel, a further size reduction step is needed. Inevitably, this creates further ultrafine particles and effectively restricts the possible reduction in fat content to about 27% by weight.
In WO 94/09649, a development of the process of U.S. Pat. No. 5080923 involves the inclusion of an emulsifier with the water when dissolving the ultrafine particles. Also WO 94/09649 teaches the use of a preferred particle size specification wherein substantially all of the particles are between about 3 to 50 &mgr;min size, even more preferably about 5 to 40 &mgr;m in size, and also teaches that less than 5 wt % of the particles would be below the lower limit and less than 2 wt % of the particles would be above the upper limit. Whilst such particle size distributions may be achievable by dissolving the ultrafines in water and then recrystallising and drying, we have found that it is difficult to dry the mixture following such water treatment. It is necessary to dry the composition because, if surface moisture is present on the sugar particles, the fat phase does not readily cover them. We have also found that such stringent particle size specifications are not necessary to enable manufacture of a good quality low fat chocolate.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
According to the present invention, there is provided a process for the manufacture of a chocolate composition having a total fat content of 18 (preferably 18.5) to 24.9 (preferably 24.5) wt %, in which particles of solid chocolate-making ingredients are intimately mixed with at least one fat, wherein (a) not more than 1 wt % of the particles exceed 60 &mgr;m, and (b) not more than 15 wt % of the particles are less than 2 &mgr;m and/or not more than 20 wt % of the particles are less than 3 &mgr;m.
This particle size requirement can be achieved using conventional chocolate processing equipment without the need to use water to dissolve the ultrafine particles. Measurement of particle size distribution is as measured by a Malvern Mastersizer or another instrument of equal or better sensitivity.
The fat will normally consist of cocoa butter and/or butterfat and/or cocoa butter equivalent (CBE). CBE's are fats with a composition similar to cocoa butter, chemically and physically, normally made from nonlauric fats and currently permitted in an amount up to 5 wt % in some countries. The present invention is further applicable to compositions in which some of the cocoa butter is replaced by a partly or wholly non-metabolisable fat, for example Caprenin.
The chocolate composition will normally contain sugar (sucrose) as nutritive carbohydrate sweetener. For sugar-reduced or sugar-free chocolate, the sucrose may be partially or wholly replaced by one or more other nutritive sweeteners such as dextrose, glucose syrup solids, fructose, lactose or maltose. The nutritive carbohydrate sweetener may be partly or wholly replaced by one or more sugar substitutes such as sugar alcohols (eg lactitol, maititol, isomalt, xylitol, mannitol, sorbitol, ethrythritol, preferably lactitol, maltitol, isomalt or any combination thereof); bulking agents (eg polydextrose, inulin, polyfructose, microcrystalline cellulose, preferably polydextrose); and intense sweeteners (eg aspartame, acesulfame-K, cyclamates, saccharin, sucralose, neohesperidin, dihydrochalone, alitame, stevia sweeteners, glycyrrhizin, thaumatin, preferably aspartame and/or acesulfame-K).
In order to improve the viscosity during processing of the chocolate composition, at least one emulsifier will normally be included as an ingredient. Typically, such emulsifiers include lecithin derived from soya bean, safflower, corn, etc, fractionated lecithins enriched with either phosphatidyl choline, phosphatidyl ethanolamine, phosphatidyl inositol; emulsifiers derived from oats, mono- and diglycerides and their tartaric esters, monosodium phosphate derivativ
Sanders Nigel
Zumbe Albert
Cadbury Schweppes Plc
Jacobson & Holman PLLC
Paden Carolyn
LandOfFree
Process for manufacture of reduced fat chocolate does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Process for manufacture of reduced fat chocolate, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Process for manufacture of reduced fat chocolate will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2566906