The origins of Icam date back to the mid-1940s, when the company’s founder, Silvio Agostoni, took over a small laboratory that produced sweets and desserts; using simple ingredients such as sugar, chestnut flour and a little cocoa powder, he came up with the 'Torta Montanina', the first real success of the new business.
1946 saw the start of the real story of Icam as a chocolate factory: the idea was to make what had hitherto been considered a luxury accessible to all families, by producing quality chocolate at an affordable price.
Icam immediately embarked on the challenging adventure of independent production, purchasing the raw materials directly at source, and to this day the company – still in the hands of the Agostoni family – has remained faithful to the principles and values of its founder, making a name for itself worldwide as one of the most authoritative business operating in the world of chocolate.
Thanks to its lengthy, sound experience in the professional channel (pastry, chocolate and ice cream makers), ICAM has put its skills and abilities to good use by developing the CiocoPasticceria range of products, specifically aimed at those who wish to feel like a “genuine pastry chef”, using reliable, top-quality products for their favourite desserts and sweets.
Today Icam is one of the few companies in the world able to guarantee complete control of the whole production chain: this challenging industrial approach allows us to achieve and maintain the very highest quality standards at every stage of the production process.
The first to grow the cocoa plant were probably the Maya, who used the seeds to prepare an energy-giving, restorative beverage.
The plantations replicate the natural conditions necessary for the cocoa trees to grow; they are delicate plants that must not be subjected to direct sunlight or variations in temperature.
20°/30°
Temperature
400m
Altitude
70% Africa
17% Central and Latin America
13% South-East Asia
Just 1% of cocoa flowers will yield cocoa pods
There are three varieties of cocoa:
CRIOLLO / FORASTERO / TRINITARIO
cocoa pods per year
One cocoa pod contains
30/40 seeds
Once the pods have been harvested, a series of fermentation processes take place: first alcoholic, then lactic and acetic.
Fermentation has three important functions:
• to remove the pulp.
• to prevent the seeds from germinating
• to create aroma precursors, i.e. those elements that during the following stages (roasting, conching, etc.) will determine the fragrance and flavour, as well as the fullness and complexity of the aromas typical of quality chocolate.
Dried in the sun for
10/12
days
Just like any other fine food, cocoa beans are subjected to painstaking quality controls.
When the sacks of beans arrive at the factory, they are unloaded and stored in silos.
This is where the chocolate production process begins.
Cleaning
The cocoa is cleaned to remove any foreign bodies; the subsequent selection process separates out the whole beans from the split ones, and the former move on along the production chain...
Pre-roasting
The beans are heated for about 100 seconds with radiant heaters at a temperature of about 400° to help remove the skin.
Breaking
The beans are crushed into tiny pieces that take the name of meal, and the skin is removed.
Alkalinisation
The cocoa meal is “bathed” in water, to which – depending on the particular cases – potassium carbonate may be added to reduce the natural acidity of the cocoa.
Roasting
The meal is roasted with hot air at a temperature of between 100° and 120°. The roasting process takes about 30 minutes, and must ensure the beans are toasted evenly so as to allow the development of the cocoa’s most noble aromas.
Grinding
The meal is ground in a pin mill to turn it into what is known as cocoa liqueur or cocoa paste.
Pressing
Hydraulic presses are used to extract the fatty part, i.e. the butter, from the cocoa paste; the dry part that remains is the cocoa cake.
Filtering
The cocoa butter is passed through paper filters to catch any impurities.
Deodorisation
The cocoa butter then undergoes a deodorisation process. A high-pressure jet of water is used to extract part of the volatile acids, in order to make the butter taste sweeter and less acidic.
Pulverisation
The cocoa cake is chopped up first roughly, then finely and finally reduced to a powder. It is then ready to be packaged for sale.
Blending
The ingredients are selected and blended, with proportions varying depending on the recipe and the type of chocolate to be made; milk, white, dark, gianduja.
Refining
Large cylindrical refining machines crush and cut the chocolate mix into particles no larger than 18 micron.
Conching
Conching can take hours, and is carried out for a number of reasons:
• to create a perfect blend of the various components
• to reduce the acidic, astringent aromas
• to extract the residual humidity, which at the end of the process should not exceed 0.5-0.8%.
At this stage, a small amount of soya lecithin (0.3%) is generally added as an emulsifier to make the chocolate smoother, together with a tiny amount of vanilla to enhance the flavour.
Tempering
Before being moulded, the chocolate paste must be subjected to a heat treatment known as tempering (8), during which the chocolate is first cooled to 26°/28° and then heated back up to 29°/32°. This is essential for the cocoa butter to solidify in a stable crystalline state in order for it to maintain the required shape once turned out of the moulds, a glossy appearance and a clean break without crumbling, as well as to ensure it keeps well.
Moulding
Once tempered, the chocolate is poured into moulds for shaping into bars, pralines, eggs, etc. It is then solidified in large cooling tunnels, at the end of which it can easily be removed from the moulds.
Packaging
The solid chocolate may now be wrapped and packaged in imaginative, eye-catching ways.