How to Extract Cocoa Butter

Key Ingredients: Cocoa beans, clean water

Things You'll Need: A large frying-pan, a large pot, a roaster, a large plastic, fan, a ladle, a fire-place or oven

Instructions

1. Pick-out cocoa beans with exceptional quality
2. Sort to remove plant residue as well as other dirt.
3. Roast the cocoa gently under low-heat to avoid burning the beans.
4. Spread it across a tarpaulin or any other clean surface so as to remove particles/outer layers of the beans.
5. Carefully winnow the beans.
6. Grinding using the mill until the paste is smooth. 
7. Heat-up your water (5 Kg of cocoa= 5 litres of water).
8. Pour the smooth paste in water and mix it well to obtain a well homogenous liquid.
9. The mixture obtained should be boiled from 45 minutes to 1 hour under high heat, then, it is heated softly.
10. When the paste thickens, the fire is reduced till oil resurfaces, then pour cold water into the warm pot and stir, let it rest for 5 minutes, collect all the oil at the surface of the pot that should go back to fire, then proceed to removing the water-like oily content .
11. Filter and bottle, the oil is ready to serve multiple uses.
12. Avoid the paste to stick or to burn at the bottom of the pot so as to avoid its bad smell from contaminating the oil.After 48 Hours left in the cold, a thick cover of the cocoa butter can still be collected at the surface of the pot, which is going to be melted again and eventually bottled.

NB: 5 kg of cocoa beans can produce up to 1 litre or more of cocoa butter.
Cocoa butter cannot be mixed with any other oil.

Source: Farmer’s Voice N° 198