National Cocoa Day keeps December for the powder rather than the bar. Warm a mug of it slowly, or work a spoonful into a stew for the depth it brings to the pot.
No founder, sponsoring organisation or establishing record for National Cocoa Day was identified. The Federal Register carries no document under the name, and the phrase appears in no edition of Chase's Calendar of Events digitised by HathiTrust.
National Cocoa Day is named for a food that international law defines by what has been taken out of it. The Codex standard for cocoa powders sorts the stuff into three grades according to how much cocoa butter is still in it.
Then it declines to say how anyone should check. Under the heading for determining cocoa butter, the current text says only that the method is to be developed, and the entry for telling the three grades apart says the same. The moisture test, by contrast, is filled in.
The United States picked a method and stuck with it. Its rule sends a laboratory to a Soxhlet extraction set out in a chemists' handbook, and the number that comes back decides what the tin on your shelf is allowed to call itself.
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Cocoa powder does not come off a tree. It is what is left once the fat has been squeezed out of ground cocoa, and the squeezing is the whole point.
Cocoa liquor is cocoa solids suspended in cocoa butter. Press it and two things come out, the butter and a cake that still holds between 10 and 24 percent fat. Break the cake, mill it, and you have the powder.
Somewhere in that chain a maker may reach for alkali. Cocoa nibs, or the beans before they are shelled, can be heated with carbonates or hydroxides, which lifts the pH toward 7 or 8.
The reasons are colour, taste, and how readily the powder will disperse in water. The step is optional, which is why two tins of the same legal food can look and taste quite different.
US regulators allow the treatment and then fence it. For each 100 parts by weight of nibs, the total alkali may not exceed the neutralizing value of 3 parts of anhydrous potassium carbonate. The permitted list is short and chemical: ammonium, potassium or sodium bicarbonate, carbonate or hydroxide, or magnesium carbonate or oxide.
On May 21, 1993, the Food and Drug Administration published its standards of identity for cacao products at 58 FR 29529. Three of its standards define grades of cocoa powder, and they are almost identical to each other.
The middle grade is written as the top grade all over again, with one clause changed. The lowest grade is the same trick a second time. Everything that separates the three is a fat figure.
National Cocoa Day arrives every December 13, and no founder, sponsor or establishing act for it turned up in the indexes searched. The day is kept for the tin, and the tin has rules.
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WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
Heavily alkalised cocoas averaged 3.9 mg of flavanols a gram.
A 2008 survey of commercial cocoa powders found natural, non-alkalised ones at an extractable pH of 5.3 to 5.8 and heavily treated ones at 7.61 and higher. Average total flavanol content ran from 34.6 mg per gram in the natural powders down to 3.9 in the heavily processed ones.
Under the international standard, a mixture of cocoa powder and sugars may be called chocolate powder only if it is at least 32 percent cocoa powder by weight. The names on a tin are not marketing copy, they are what the composition decides.
A 2024 study ran its own alkalisation experiments across a range of sodium hydroxide concentrations, temperatures and times rather than surveying finished products. Concentration mattered more than temperature or time for the colour and pH markers that define the treatment.
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GOOD TO KNOW
Phosphoric acid, citric acid and L-tartaric acid are all permitted neutralizing agents for cacao nibs, and a powder made that way must carry the words Processed with neutralizing agent on its label.
Processed with alkali must accompany the name of the food even when the alkali was used on the nibs the cocoa was later made from. Where the name is conspicuous on the label, the statement has to sit immediately before or after it with no printed or graphic matter in between.
Alkali can meet the cocoa as nibs, as press cake after the butter is out, or as liquor, and nib treatment is the most common. Two tins both reading processed with alkali may have met it at completely different stages.
Cocoa with dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate for manufacturing is a standardized food additive holding no more than 0.4 percent of that compound. It is permitted in dry beverage mixes as long as the compound stays at no more than 75 parts per million of the finished drink.
Breakfast cocoa may also be sold as high fat cocoa, and the middle grade may be labelled either cocoa or medium fat cocoa. Only lowfat cocoa is given a single legal name.
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No. It is an unofficial observance and a normal working day, and the Federal Register index holds no document under the name.
COLOPHON
Hot chocolate belongs to the coldest stretch of the year, and National Hot Chocolate Day is the excuse to make a proper one. Warm the milk, stir it slowly, and drink it in the warmest chair in the house.
International Chocolate Day hands the calendar to chocolate itself, in whatever form you like it best. Break off a square of something dark, stir a mug of cocoa, and give it a minute of your attention.
Indulge in chocolatey goodness and celebrate National Chocolate Day with sweet treats, rich desserts, and delicious recipes!
