Chocolate products and ingredients and methods for producing novel oil-in-water suspensions

Abstract From the Canadian patent

The invention provides novel means and methods for manipulating cocoa and milk ingredients, for example, to produce edible oil-in-water suspensions and optionally drying the suspensions to reduce the moisture or water activity level. In one embodiment, cocoa products are used to produce a gel network formed by cocoa starches and/or proteins. The suspension is formed with milk proteins and cocoa solids and also comprises crystallized cocoa butter as a dispersed component, and water or skim milk as the continuous phase or aqueous phase, and the suspension is optionally dried to reduce the moisture content and/or manipulate the final texture or characteristics. The compositions …