Chocolate, an ingredient used in the sweet and baking industry has been a firm favourite of millions around the world. The world would definitely be a sadder place without this delicious ingredient. It is also one of the most addictive, due to it’s endorphin releasing potential in the brain. While cocoa aspect of this offers a variety of health benefits, the sweet ingredients tend to have adverse effects.

However, regardless of your personal or medical perspective on this ingredient, it seems to stand the test of time within the cake making industry. Not only does it offer diversity, it ensures a smoother and creamier merger of all the other ingredients. The confectionary industry has been finding ideal ways of ensuring people can enjoy the various taste combinations that chocolate offers, with some being hailed a success and others ending in the bin.

It was Dr James Baker chocolate discovery that brought about the chocolate cake craze. He achieved this by taking two relatively large, but also spherical millstones, which he then used to grind the cocoa beans. This in turn was how chocolate was actually made. The following centuries saw the rise of other methods, which in turn improved its over-all taste and versatility.

The history of extraction

It was in 1828 that Coenraad van Houten developed the first extraction machine for chocolate by extracting the fat from cocoa liquor thus making cocoa butter. This was sold in rock form and could also be made into powdered too. Otherwise only the very well off would have chocolate, this made chocolate available to the masses. Due to this the limitation that were once imposed by this ingredient where now lifted allowing for artisan bakeries to further expand its uses. Perhaps it can even be said this is when the chocolate revolution started, which has allowed many a generation to indulge in various offerings of delicious cakes.

Lindt

The ancestors of Lindt chocolate developed the silkiness, called conching that we find in today’s chocolates, and this made chocolate easier to bake with as it mixes smoothly with cake batters. Only in 1886 was chocolate used for the first time in cakes, as before this it was used only in chocolate drinks and for glazes.

Only in the 1930’s did chocolate become widely used in cakes. In the 1990 chocolate got its decadent label when molten chocolate cakes with liquid chocolate centres appeared. Chocolate has been infused with many flavours since then such as tea, red pepper, curry, passion fruit, and champagne.