Control of Phase Separation for CBS-Based Compound Chocolates Focusing on Growth Kinetics

Abstract

Phase separation in the cocoa butter substitute (CBS)–cocoa butter (CB) pseudo-binary component system strongly depends on the storage temperature. This dependence is attributed to the fact that the transformation rate of the CBS is substantially lower than that of the CB, which means that the crystallization behavior for the CBS is predominantly dominated by the presence of the free-energy hump (higher activation energy barrier). This means that the rate of phase transition is lower for the CBS. In particular, the slow phase transition of CBS strongly affects the crystal quality such as the existence of the strain between crystalline domains, which is related to the causes of the fat bloom of CBS-based compound chocolates. By exploiting this finding, we demonstrated that fat-bloom-free CBS-based compound chocolates can be obtained by improving the crystal quality of the matrix composed of the β′ form in the CBS under the optimal storage temperature, even when the chocolates contain 20%CB. We expect the results of this study to lead to a new product of tastier and less expensive CBS-based compound chocolates with a high concentration of CB.