The chocolate is then tempered to stabilize the cocoa butter crystals. “Tempering ensures that the finished white chocolate has a glossy appearance and a smooth texture,” Best says.

Unfortunately, cocoa butter can re-crystallize into any of six different forms (polymorphs), and only one of these, the beta crystal, hardens into firm, shiny chocolate.

Those crystals and globules are actually sugar chunks embedded in cocoa butter, but at magnifications of between 500× and 5,000×, they look like the contours of a surreal landscape.

Tempering is the process of using heat to break down the cocoa butter crystals in chocolate and then allowing only the strongest and most stable ones to re-form. [Related: ...

Cocoa butter bloom occurs when the chocolate softens so much that the cocoa butter crystals melt and molecules of fat migrate to the surface where they form new crystals.

Crystallization is the keyword here. When chocolate is first melted, the cocoa butter’s fat crystals melt completely. To start reforming those crystals, stir the melted chocolate to cool it ...

Cocoa butter crystals can take six forms, one of which makes for chocolate with the ideal glossiness, snap, and melting behavior. Chocolatiers carefully temper chocolate, melting and cooling it ...

Scientists from Loughborough and Nottingham Universities have used the Linkam Linksys32-DV software to visualise and measure the in-situ growth of fat crystals on the surface of chocolate.

Crystallography has shown that it is the V shape of cocoa butter crystals that gives chocolate its shine and an appropriate melting temperature in the mouth (32 °C).