Fat glaze

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Cocoa-based fat icing

Fat glaze is a chocolate-like product made from vegetable fat (if that were 100% cocoa butter, the product can be called chocolate), sugar and other additives such as cocoa or milk components , flavors and emulsifiers . It is used as substitute for chocolate coating mainly for the glazing of pastries , ice cream , aerated confectionery and other sweets used.

Areas of application

The reasons for using fat icing instead of real chocolate are

  1. Lower costs, since cocoa butter is one of the more expensive fats and the vegetable fats used are usually cheaper, and since the production process can be simplified and shortened compared to chocolate.
  2. Fat glaze is better suited for some areas of application, for example for coating ice cream or sponge cakes that are to be cut. By suitable selection and processing of the fat, fat glazes with suitable properties for the intended field of application can be produced, such as softer, easily cut glaze for covering cakes.
  3. Fat icing is easier to process than chocolate because it doesn't need to be tempered .

composition

variants

By modifying the recipe, different types of chocolate such as ordinary (dark) chocolate, milk and white chocolate can be modeled in terms of appearance and taste:

  • Fat icing containing cocoa is used to imitate milk and dark chocolate. Heavily de-oiled cocoa powder is added to this, and in some cases cocoa mass may also be added.
  • Cocoa-free fat glaze is used to imitate white chocolate, but can also be produced in bright colors and in all kinds of flavors using colorants and flavors (such as fruit powder ). The colorants and flavorings should be fat-soluble if possible , but the range of foodstuffs permitted for foodstuffs is limited, so that water-soluble colorings are also used.
  • Hazelnut fat glaze is similar to the cocoa-containing glaze and also contains a small amount of cocoa, but in larger quantities a mass of roasted, ground hazelnut kernels . The color and taste of the glaze depend on the intensity of the roasting process; its consistency is influenced by the high proportion of hazelnut oil . Apart from that, the production and processing correspond to the glazes containing cocoa.

fat

As a rule, fat glaze is made with hydrogenated substitute fats containing lauric acid, namely with hydrogenated or fractionated coconut or palm kernel oil . Their physical and sensory properties are similar to cocoa butter, but they are incompatible with it, i.e. they cannot be mixed with it, as a cocoa butter content of more than 5% in the fat content leads to fat bloom . For this reason, only de-oiled cocoa powder may be used in fat glazes of this type, even though natural fat cocoa mass would allow the cocoa taste to develop more intensively. Furthermore, if real chocolate is also processed on the same system, machines, tanks and pipelines must be meticulously cleaned of grease residues before the production changeover.

In addition, fat glaze can be made from non-lauric acid substitute fats that have a higher tolerance for cocoa butter (up to 20-25% in the fat content), but differ more in texture from it. The use of cocoa butter equivalents is also possible and allows any mixture with cocoa butter, but the advantages of simplified processing are then omitted, since these fats have to be tempered just as laboriously as chocolate; also the cost savings are probably not so great.

At least historically, hydrogenated marine animal fats (such as whale oil) have also been processed.

Other components

Milk constituents are mainly used to imitate milk chocolate and for white glazes, but in smaller quantities, under certain circumstances, also for dark glazes. In order not to complicate the fat composition by introducing milk fat, skimmed milk powder or - if legally permissible - whey powder is used.

Lecithin is usually used as an emulsifier .

Manufacturing and processing

The production of fat glazes is basically the same as the production of chocolate, by first mixing the ingredients and then refining and conching the mixture in rolling mills . Conching, which lasts for many hours, is not absolutely necessary with fat glaze and was previously considered superfluous. High-quality fat glaze is conched, however, since it is assumed that the heating of the cocoa components over a longer period of time, especially when using deoiled cocoa powder with lauric acid-containing fats, promotes the development of the cocoa taste.

When processing fat glaze, the precrystallization required for chocolate (so-called tempering) is normally unnecessary, as the substitute fats, unlike cocoa butter, are not polymorphic and crystallize spontaneously and quickly in a small temperature range . However, this does not apply if cocoa butter equivalents are used, because these have to be tempered like cocoa butter.

Legal classification

In contrast to chocolate, which is subject to relatively narrow definitions in the European Union in the form of the Cocoa Directive - implemented in Germany by the Cocoa Ordinance - the nature and composition of fat glazes is not legally binding. Since fat glaze containing cocoa in particular can easily be confused with chocolate, the labeling of baked goods that are coated with such fat glaze is important from a legal point of view . the provider must mark these in such a way that the consumer is not deceived. In the case of packaged goods, a note in the list of ingredients is sufficient ; in the case of loose goods, a notice that is attached in the immediate vicinity of the goods offered.

In the guiding principles for fine baked goods of the German Food Book, there is still a ban on fat glaze, which can be confused with couverture, for "fine baked goods of special quality" (the so-called top products). These include, for example, Baumkuchen , wafer gingerbread and Sachertorte . This point of view no longer corresponds to current European jurisprudence: the use of fat glaze must also be regarded as permissible for these products if it is declared as described above.

Individual evidence

  1. a b Gerhard Eisenbrand, Peter Schreier (ed.): Römpp-Lexikon Lebensmittelchemie . Food law edited by Alfred Hagen Meyer. 2nd, completely revised and enlarged edition. Thieme, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-13-143462-7 , keyword “coating compounds ”, p. 1210 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ^ A b c d e Bernard W. Minfie: Chocolate, Cocoa, and Confectionery. Science and Technology . 3. Edition. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York 1989, ISBN 978-94-011-7926-3 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  3. a b c d J. Bode, E. Becker, B. Curtius, F. Kunz: Chocolate coating masses and fat glazes . 4th, revised edition. Knowledge Forum Backwaren e. V., 2012 ( online (PDF, 230.6 kB)). online ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wissensforum-backwaren.de
  4. ^ Heinrich Fincke: Handbook of cocoa products . Springer, Berlin 1936.
  5. ^ German food book, guidelines for fine baked goods