Definition: Cocoa Butter, the fat content of the cocoa bean, is a highly-stable vegetable fat that remains solid at room temperature but melts right around body temperature, responsible for the melt-in-your-mouth quality of chocolate. Chocolate is essentially cocoa butter that has been recombined with cocoa solids like cocoa powder. While cocoa butter is itself a dairy-free fat, many chocolate products contain dairy ingredients such as casein, whey, milk powder, milk solids or traces of milk, so label-reading is definitely a neccessity for dairy-free and vegan chocolate-lovers.
Because of it's high stability, cocoa butter is also used in a variety of health and beauty products as well, such as lotions, facial products, cosemetics and pharmaceutical products.
