A chocolate's life begins on the Equatorial belt where the cocoa tree, Theobroma Cacao, grows. Africa is responsible for 75% of the world's cocoa plantations with the remainder being in Asia and Latin America. African beans are known for their body, while Asian and American beans give a more refined aroma. The different beans can be mixed to produce different chocolate recipes.

The cocoa tree flowers every 6 months and each tree produces no more than 40 cocoa pods. These are harvested by hand, left to ripen and then carefully peeled open using long knives. The pulp is then removed and left in trays covered with banana leaves to ferment for up to a week. This process removes any pulp which has stuck to the beans and during fermentation the beans change colour from beige to purple and their aromas begin to develop. They are then left in the sun to dry for 6 days stopping the fermentation process and making them easier to store. Once dry, they are quality coded and then shipped to destinations all over the world where they will be transformed into chocolate.

On arrival the beans are cleaned and quickly dried under heaters. They are then crushed and the shells removed to leave the nib, or kernel. The nibs are roasted to develop their aromas, and ground. Heat produced by grinding melts the cocoa butter present in the nibs and makes the ground cocoa liquid. This is called liquor. The liquor can now be used as an ingredient in the chocolate, or can be further processed into cocoa butter and powder. To separate the liquor into these two components, it is compressed through a microscopically fine sieve under very high pressure. The cocoa butter passes through the sieve and the cocoa solids remain in the form of a flattened cake which can be ground into a very fine cocoa powder.

The processing of the cocoa bean is now complete and the raw materials required for making chocolate are now available. There are three different types of chocolate, dark, milk and white. They are all made using the same process but their ingredients differ - dark chocolate contains cocoa liquor, cocoa butter and sugar, milk chocolate also contains milk powder, and white chocolate contains no cocoa liquor only cocoa butter, milk powder and sugar. All three contain vanilla to enhance their flavour.

The ingredients are weighed precisely, mixed and blended to form dough. The dough is pressed between rollers to produce a fine powder which is then transferred to conches. Conches contain lots of metal beads which grind or knead the chocolate and sugar to super fine particles which cannot be detected by the tongue. The friction caused by kneading heats the powder and melts it evaporating any unpleasant acidic aromas. After conching, cocoa butter and soya lecithin are added to make the chocolate liquid and stabilise the liquidity.

The final stage in chocolate production is tempering. This involves heating and cooling the chocolate precisely so that the cocoa butter forms small uniform crystals. Correct tempering produces a glossy chocolate which has a good 'snap' when it is broken.

Chocolate growing hills in the Philippines