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Young Scientists Look Deeper Into Taza Chocolate

October 13, 2009

gabriel and duresh

Taza Chocolate Inspires Young Scientists

Taza Chocolate recently helped introduce several local high school students to the world of scientific research. Gabriel Peña and Duresh Parmeshwari, students at the Engineering School in Hyde Park, recently completed the Engineering Pathways for Success summer internship at Harvard. During the program, they worked with current grad students Naveen Sinha and Emily Gardel to study the science of chocolate.

Naveen had the idea to study the science of chocolate during a class on “soft condensed matter” during his first year in grad school, when he read about the complexities of how cocoa butter, cocoa particles, and sugar come together to form a chocolate bar. The teaching assistant for the course, Emily Gardel, brought the high school students to her laboratory and taught them how to use the microscopes and other equipment for their studies.

For their project, Gabriel and Duresh wanted to know why improperly-stored chocolate (e.g. leaving it in a warm place) can lead to a white, powdery coating known as "bloom". However, first they needed to learn the basics of chocolate. Taza founder Alex Whitmore gave Gabriel and Duresh a tour of the factory so that they could see first-hand how chocolate is made: starting from fresh cocoa beans and ending up with a packaged product.

The students did numerous experiments with different percentages of cacao (e.g. bittersweet vs. extra-dark chocolate), different temperatures, and different cooling methods to see how this affected the appearance of the chocolate. They found that if the chocolate is heated above a critical temperature, then bloom forms on the surface. However, even if bloom occurred, they were able to re-melt the chocolate and recover the shiny appearance. In future work they plan to study this recovery process in more detail and further investigate the effect of chocolate composition on bloom formation. As part of the Engineering Pathways for Success program, they will present their research at a science fair in January.

Below are some of the images derived from the experiment. These are highly magnified images of Taza Chocolate bars and discs.

chocolate mexicano up close