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Although cocoa butter (CB) is an ideal fat for the use in chocolate, limited supply, high demand and fluctuating prices lead the industry to look for alternatives. In the present study, physicochemical properties of commercially available cocoa butter equivalents (CBE) and hard palm mid fraction (PMF) are compared with those of CB. Subsequently, their functionality in real and compound chocolate was evaluated. CBE and PMF contained a comparable (12.0–13.8 %) but significant lower amount of POSt compared to CB (38.7 %). Differences in nonisothermal crystallization and melting profile were observed between CB and CBE. The two-step isothermal crystallization at 20 °C showed that the nucleation started earlier as the StOSt content increased. No significant differences were observed in melting behavior between the reference chocolate (ChocREF) and the chocolates with partial replacement. Hardness was significantly higher for ChocREF. Differences in flow behavior were demonstrated in yield stress, but plastic viscosity of all chocolate products was similar. Although instrumental analyses defined differences, the trained panel and consumers had difficulties to distinguish the chocolate products produced from CBE

A multi-methodological approach was used to study the isothermal crystallization of cocoa butter (CB) in the presence of sunflower oil based cocoa butter equivalents (CBEs). pNMR, DSC, oscillatory rheology, XRD, and PLM were used for this purpose. All the techniques confirmed that at 20 degrees C isothermal crystallization of all the blends is a two-step process with formation of alpha crystals in the first step and formation of beta' crystals in the second step. The blends with high amount of CBEs contained more high-melting triacylglycerols (TAGs) and diacylglycerol (DAG) in compare with CB acting as seed crystals enhancing the formation of alpha- crystals in the first crystallization step. Therefore, the induction time of the first crystallization step was inversely related to the amount of CBE. In contrast, the subsequent polymorphic transition was delayed by the presence of the CBE due to their low-melting TAGs. However, adding up to 5% CBE did not change the Foubert's parameters for isothermal crystallization significantly. All the blends (except 5% HOSO CBE), had alpha mediated beta' crystallization. Picturing of the microstructure showed that for the CB and the blends up to 50% large microstructures, indicative of the beta(V) polymorph developed during storage. At 100%, a dense network of spherulites was formed at the beginning of the crystallization period, but upon further storage, no large morphological changes were observed

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from BH50H5 to BH50H15. Eventually, both binary and ternary-EIE were also found to significantly alter the crystal microstructure of lauric fat blends, in terms of crystal morphology, size and network density.