Gary Hodge, age 11, of Packsville, W  Va,,

How do they make chocolate?

A chocolate factory hums with washing, roasting, crushing and grinding machines that work day and night, It takes more than a week to change the raw materials for making chocolate into the finished candy, The basic ingredient is the almond‑shaped cacao bean  Sugar also must be added to the recipe and sometimes starches, vanilla and milk solids 

The ingredients arrive from far and near, The sacks of cacao beans come from Central America or perhaps from West Africa, They have been partly prepared, for after harvesting they are left  on the ground to ferment, a process which causes chemical changes 

The chocolate maker receives an assortment of different beans and uses his skills to mix a blend which will give the best possible flavor to the finished chocolate,

If you tasted a raw cacao bean you would wonder how its harsh and bitter  flavor could be made into mouth‑watering candy  But the chocolate maker knows how the trick is done, The white or mauve beans are slowly roasted in a big machine until they seem quite dry  The flavor is now just a little better and the beans have turned a proper chocolate brown  Their outer coats have turned to thin, papery husks 

Next the roasted beans go to a machine which crushes them between giant rollers  Whirling fans sift the dry husks and blow them away, The beans are broken up into little brown pieces called nibs  The roasted and crushed nibs contain more than 50  per cent of a fat called cocoa butter, though they seem quite dry 

The next machine may be fitted with granite mill stones or steel rollers  The grinding process causes the cocoa butter to melt and turns the rest of the nibs into dark, brown powder  The fat and powder mix together and come out as a thick syrup which is called chocolate liquor.

If you have sampled a taste of the unsweetened baking chocolate in the kitchen, then you know the exact flavor of the chocolate liquor. 

When the dark syrup is refined, it becomes the basic ingredient in all chocolate recipes  The refining is done by a machine fatted with a flat atone slab under a  granite roller  The chocolate liquor is placed on the slab and the machine rolls back and forth without rest for four days and nights  At last the well‑rolled mixture is poured into molds to set 

No, it is not yet chocolate candy  It is bitter baking chocolate  The recipe for eating‑chocolate needs sugar and usually vanilla and starch  These ingredients are melted or cooked and blended with chocolate liquor  T o make milk chocolate, a mixture of milk and cocoa butter is boiled down and evaporated to a paste and then blended with the basic liquor  This paste is then ground under the granite rollers for five more weary days and nights