Effect of tempering and cocoa butter equivalents on crystallization kinetics, polymorphism, melting, and physical properties of dark chocolates

The high price and scarcity of cocoa butter (CB) motivate the search for new cocoa butter equivalents (CBE) for manufacturing dark chocolates. Using CBEs in combination with tempering regimens is an option to produce fine chocolates. Thus, CBEs' thermal properties and crystallization kinetics were studied, and the effect of CBE, and tempering regimes on the crystallization kinetics, polymorphism, melting, and physical properties of dark chocolates were determined. The CBE consisted of CB mixtures with coconut oil (CB/CNO) and sacha inchi oil (CB/SIO) in concentrations of 55/45 and 65/35, respectively. CBEs combined with two tempering regimes (high and low) were used to produce Ch-CNO and Ch-SIO dark chocolates, whose thermal data were obtained by Differential Scanning Calorimetry. The adjustment of thermal data to the Avrami equation permitted us to determine that both factors accelerated the crystallization process up to 7.25 ± 0.18 min in Ch-CNO and 7.08 ± 0.15 min in Ch-SIO and produced spherical and plate-like geometries crystallized nuclei. Also, they generated 90.3 ± 1.18 of form β₂ in Ch-CNO and 92.56 ± 1.49 in Ch-SIO. Moreover, the chocolates' texture, rheology, color, and melting properties were within acceptable limits. Therefore, using coconut oil and sacha inchi oil as an alternative to traditional CBEs in dark chocolates is feasible.