Chocolate products and ingredients and methods for producing novel oil-in-water suspensions

The invention provides novel means and methods for manipulating cocoa and milk ingredients, for example, to produce edible oil-in-water suspensions. In one embodiment, cocoa products are used to produce a gel network formed by cocoa starches and/or proteins. The suspension is formed with milk proteins and cocoa solids and also comprises crystallized cocoa butter as a dispersed component, and water or skim milk as the continuous phase or aqueous phase. The compositions, products, and ingredients possible according to the invention provide novel methods and components for low or reduced calorie or sugar free chocolate products or ingredients having the same cocoa content as conventional chocolate and/or falling within the standard of identity for chocolate products. In addition, the production and packaging options for chocolate products are expanded by the use of the invention as the viscosity of the chocolate product or ingredient can be varied easily without specific reliance on cocoa butter content.