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Cocoa beans are grown in pods. The pods are the size of a football. Once ripe, the pods are picked off the cocoa tree and taken to a processing house.
At the processing house, the pods are split open, and the cocoa beans are removed. The beans are not brown, nor do they taste like chocolate. They are a milky white color, and taste very bitter.
Next, the beans are fermented. They are placed in large, shallow heated trays. Workers occasionally stir the beans so that they come out equally fermented. The beans turn brown during fermentation. This takes about 5 days.
The cocoa beans are then shipped to many different parts of the world. The chocolate manufacturers then dry roast them. This develops the color and flavor of chocolate. The outer shell of the bean is removed, and the meat inside is broken into small pieces, which are called "cocoa nibs".
Cocoa nibs consist of cocoa solids and cocoa butter. The cocoa butter is fat, while the cocoa solids are coarse powder. The cocoa nibs are converted into a non-alcoholic liquid called cocoa liquor. The liquor is then placed in a high-pressure press to squeeze the cocoa butter from the solid cocoa. This forms a cake of solid cocoa. The cocoa is then pressed directly to separate the two components.
The cocoa butter is further refined for a later use in chocolate production. The cocoa solids are taken from the cocoa press and ground into a fine powder.
If the chocolate will be made into chocolate candy, it is combined with other ingredients. Bittersweet chocolates, used often for baking, are made by adding cocoa butter and sugar at a minimum. Milk chocolates add milk as well. Most chocolates have an emulsifier, which is usually soy lecithin, to help the ingredients blend, and vanilla.
The ingredients are mixed under heat to form molten chocolate. The chocolate then goes into huge vats, where large, smooth granite rollers keep the mixture stirred, and further grinds the cocoa powder into extremely small bits. The longer the chocolate spends in these vats, the smoother it becomes.
The chocolate is then poured into molds, and cools. It is then wrapped, shipped, and sold all around the world.

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