Cocoa butter is what you reach for when your chosen chocolate is thicker than the job needs. Ours is Callebaut's deodorised cocoa butter, pressed from roasted whole cocoa beans and supplied in the same Callet form you already scoop and weigh every day, so it melts in evenly and measures out without guesswork.

The pressing process leaves this butter neutral in colour and taste, known as deodorised, so it thins your chocolate and lifts the shine without carrying any cocoa aroma of its own into a flavour you have already balanced. That makes it the steady choice for white and flavoured work, where a butter with its own character would be heard.

What Is Cocoa Butter? 

Cocoa butter is the fat that sits inside the cocoa bean, pressed out after roasting and separated from the solids that go on to become cocoa powder. It is the ingredient behind the snap, the gloss and the clean melt you expect from good chocolate. On its own it is firm, pale and, once deodorised, almost flavourless, which is why chocolatiers treat it as a tool rather than an ingredient in its own right.

How to Use Cocoa Butter in Callets

Callebaut's guidance is to add between 1% and 8% cocoa butter to the total volume of your chocolate. The low end is enough to loosen a low fluidity couverture; the high end gives the very thin, fast running chocolate you want for delicate shells, fine enrobing and clean work through a spray gun. Melt the callets gently, stir them into your melted chocolate before you temper, then temper exactly as you normally would. The extra cocoa butter changes the fluidity, not the method, and it brings better gloss and a firmer snap with it.

You can find out more about fluidity in our Guide to Viscosity in Chocolate.

This cocoa butter is a great base for coloured work. Melt it, blend in a fat soluble colour and you have a spray or brush medium that sets with the shell rather than sitting on top of it.

At 3%, a sensible middle setting for moulded bonbons, one 3kg tub carries you through 100kg of chocolate. At 1% it stretches to 300kg; at the full 8% it treats around 37kg.

Deodorised or Undeodorised?

Both are pure cocoa butter, and the difference is whether the natural cocoa aroma has been taken out. Deodorised, like this one, allows your own flavours to shine and is the perfect choice when you are working with white chocolate, fruit or florals. Undeodorised keeps the smell and taste of the bean, which suits clean label work and anyone who wants the cocoa character to carry through into the finished piece.

Storage and Shelf Life 

Keep the tub closed at 12 to 20°C somewhere dry and free of strong smells. Cocoa butter is a fat and it will take on whatever it is stored beside. Sealed and stored that way it keeps for 24 months from production. Let a cold tub come back to room temperature before you open it so condensation does not settle on the surface.