Project Update
December 7, 2022
"Chocolate" Bars... with No Cacao (feat. Coffee Beans)
Exploratory cooking science project determines the best recipe for making a "chocolate" bar using no cacao/chocolate parts.
Project Dates: October 2022 - December 2022
Closeup of chocolate bar made from roast coffee beans and mango butter.
As Sophie and Michael Coe write in the True History of Chocolate, chocolate was only consumed as a drink for the longest part of the bean’s history but has become an extremely popular dessert in recent decades. According to a recent YouGov poll, three-quarters of American adults drink coffee. We set out to bridge the two experiences by creating a “chocolate” bar with no cocoa-derived ingredients. In our research, the only commercially available chocolate bars branded as being made exclusively from coffee beans contain cocoa butter, which means that the bars are not truly cocoa-free. Other non-commercial endeavors reported in online forums also included cocoa butter as an ingredient. In our extended literature review, including user-maintained forums, we were not able to identify a report of a coffee bar made with no cocoa-derived ingredients.
Methods
We used a combination of different ingredient lists and ingredient proportions to optimize the coffee bar recipe. In particular, we used the following standard recipe:
200g coffee beans
200g butter/fatty ingredient
175g sugar
(optional) 100g milk ingredient
2g salt
0.5g soy lecithin powder (emulsifier)
We tested two different kinds of coffee beans: Decaf French Roast Ground Coffee and Decaf Medium Roast Instant Coffee. For fatty ingredients we tested the following: Cow milk butter, Mango butter, Kokum butter, and Cocoa butter (for reference). In addition, we tested the following two milk ingredients to create a milk coffee bar and test the effects of milk in the final product consistency: Whole dry milk powder and Evaporated milk (unsweetened).
For all recipes, we heated the fatty ingredient and, after mixing for about 15 minutes, combined all ingredients. We then let all recipes rest in the fridge for a day before tasting and testing the resulting product.
Visuals of resulting products.
Results
We used both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the results of our testing. First, we compared the flavor, texture, and consistency of the resulting products. We also compared the Elastic Modulus of each product, as a quantitative way to capture the snappiness expected from typical chocolate bars.
Our testing indicates that the French Roast ground coffee is the better choice for the coffee bar recipe. Although the instant coffee produced more velvety consistencies, we were unable to overcome or mask the bitterness of the resulting product, which rendered it inedible. Furthermore, the mango butter was the fatty ingredient that produced the closest result in terms of the snappy and shiny consistency demonstrated in the reference cocoa butter product. Those results are correlated with the elastic modulus tests. The French roast coffee beans + mango butter product demonstrated the closest elastic modulus result to the reference French roast coffee beans + cocoa butter product.
Comparison of elastic moduli of products.
Outlook
Our results indicate that a coffee bar made from French roast coffee beans and mango butter can be a suitable replacement in terms of replicating the consistency and texture of chocolate bars, while providing a pleasant flavor. In future projects, more innovative ways to “mask” the bitterness of coffee bar products containing instant coffee could create more suitable candidates.
Notes
This work was co-developed with the help of my teammate Samuel Buckley-Bonanno.
I would like to thank the GENED 1104 teaching staff team for their support throughout this project. I would like to extend my special thanks to our Lab section’s Teaching Fellow Kate for her invaluable support and encouragement throughout the semester and the final project stage.
