Question: Is cocoa butter dairy-free?
Answer: Good news-- yes! While many in the dairy-free and vegan communities see the word butter and assume that cocoa butter contains milk, this is not the case. Cocoa butter, the fat portion of the cocoa bean, is a completely vegetarian fat source and is directly responsible for the melt-in-your-mouth quality of chocolate, which is essentially cocoa butter that has been recombined with cocoa solids like cocoa powder.
So why are some chocolate bars labeled dairy-free?
Well, unfortunately, many chocolate manufacturers add dairy-derived ingredients such as casein, whey, milk solids, milk powder and other ingredients to their chocolate bars, or their chocolates are processed in a facility that also processes milk products and, as a result, contain traces of dairy.
