The hazelnuts and cocoa spread.
A healthy, genuine and nourishing food.
The spread is a quite recent food. It was created for first time around year 1950 as alternative to the solid chocolate bars. Made by same ingredients of chocolate, that are: sugar, cocoa, milk, and a little difference: while the chocolate has cocoa-butter, the spread has vegetable oil, ans this is what makes the spread “smearable”.

COCOA AND ITS PLANT

The distinctive ingredient of spread is the cocoa. Cocoa (Theobroma cacao) is a tropical plant coming from south America just after the discovering of this continent around 1500. The plant is properly a tree, it lives a long and needs humid and hot habit, it can reach up to 10meter highness. The fruit is a berry of great dimensions, green, yellow and orange coloured, long up to 20 cmand having a weight of barely 500g. The maturation takes 6 months, after which the seeds can be separated from the pulp, and are laid into huge basins in order to ferment, which gives to the seeds their typical dark-red colour and special taste. After fermentation the seeds must be roasted at 130°C and later on dried at 80°C. Then them pass through the millstone till them become like a paste, now by a pressing, it is possible to get the cocoa-butter or the cocoa-powder.

THE PRODUCTION OF SPREAD

To obtain the spread, the ingredients must pass through three different stages: the mixing, the refinement and the compounding into conches. First of all the ingredients (sugar, cocoa, hazelnuts and vegetable oils) must be mixed, then this mixture is sent towards a machine that refine and reduce dimensions till is was a paste, which can now go into the conch, that is quite an enormous pot where some granite cones go around. The spread now gets its own delicate and sweet taste and can later fill the jars, the tubes (of Pic-Nic Cream) or the cups of snack (Pic-Nic Break, Pic-Nic Gadgets and Pic-Nic Kids).
One image of the "Conch" in the factory of Santa Lucia di Piave (Treviso Italy).
© 2005 OSCAR S.p.A. Industria Dolciaria - all rights reserved
Headquarter address: Via E. Maiorana, 2 - 31025 S. Lucia di Piave - Treviso - Italy
Consumer service Tel. +39-0438-659624 - Fax +39-0438-659650
e-mail: consumer@oscarspa.com - visit also www.amordipane.com

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