Cameroon: How to Make Cocoa Butter

Did you know that the star product when processing cocoa into derivative products is cocoa butter? Yes indeed; even if this remains a secret to some, this valuable vegetable oil is a real goldmine for people wanting to get into this business, since the price per kilogram is quite attractive and demand is there.

Cocoa butter is the fat extracted from roasted cocoa beans. It's a substance widely used in cooking, but also in the medical field and in the cosmetics industry.

In Cameroon, making cocoa butter is a genuine business opportunity worth investing in. Cameroon is among the top cocoa-producing countries in the world, so the raw material, cocoa beans, is readily available.

In this article, we'll walk you through a technical guide showing you how to extract cocoa oil the traditional way, as well as using an oil extractor or oil press (imported machines that can cold- or hot-press oil from any oilseed).

Method 1: Traditional Cocoa Butter Making

It's important to note that this traditional method is labor-intensive and takes a bit longer than the second method, which we'll briefly cover as well. Without further delay, let's go through the different steps for making cocoa butter the traditional way:

• Choose good-quality, mature cocoa;
• Hand-sort to remove plant debris and bad beans (flattened beans);
• Roast the beans over low heat without burning them (roasting);
• Spread them on a flat surface to remove all the husks from the cocoa beans;
• Winnow;
• Grind the beans in a mill to get a fine paste;
• Warm some water (5 kg = 5 liters of water);
• Add the paste to the water and mix to get a uniform liquid;
• Boil this mixture over high heat for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, then over low heat;
• When the paste starts to get heavy, lower the heat until oil appears, then pour cold water into the hot pot and stir;
• Let it sit for 5 minutes, then collect all the oil that rises to the surface into a pot, which you put back on the heat to remove any water contained in the oil;
• Filter and bottle the oil obtained;
• Your cocoa butter is ready.

NB: Avoid letting the paste stick or burn at the bottom of the pot, as this could give the cocoa butter a bad smell. Also, after 48 hours in a cold place, you can still collect the thick layer of cocoa butter that forms on the surface of the pot, which you can melt down and bottle as well.

With this traditional method of making cocoa butter, you can get 1 liter of butter from 5 kg of cocoa beans. This method remains labor-intensive if you plan to produce large quantities for sale. To address this, extracting cocoa butter using a machine is recommended.

Method 2: Extracting Cocoa Butter with an Oil Press Machine

This method involves using a machine to extract cocoa butter. For a better extraction rate of cocoa oil from the beans, we recommend using imported machines from Asia, like the one in the following image:

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These machines perform very well and make extracting cocoa butter very easy. All you have to do is roast the cocoa beans and run them through the machine. Once the beans are fed into the extraction machine, you get the precious liquid (cocoa butter) on one side, and on the other compartment, out comes the cake (the cocoa mass left after the oil is removed), which can be ground into cocoa powder or used to make chocolate.

With this machine, you can extract cocoa butter, groundnut oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, soybean oil, sesame oil, and many others. In addition, extraction can be done cold or hot, depending on your preference.