Unilever-backed project to 3D print the 'perfect' chocolate bar

3D printing has seen all sorts of unconventional applications, but a team of researchers are looking to utilise the technology to make the "perfect" piece of chocolate.

Scientists at the University of Amsterdam and Delft University, with backing from consumer goods company Unilever, have come together to prove that the properties of edible products can be designed just like any other materials, which could pave the way for everyday foods that can be tailor-made to be more enjoyable to eat.

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These artificial structures, or "Metamaterials," as they are known, do not occur in nature but can be created in a lab. In this case, the building block for the printing process isn't wood or concrete, but chocolate.

Using topology optimisation, the team have been able to print edible products designed to snap in the mouth in certain ways, which they determined would make them more pleasurable to eat.

The research was published in the Soft Matter journal and could represent a new type of fine dining.

As anyone who has ever tried to work with chocolate will know, it needs to be properly tempered or its properties, taste or texture may be ruined by simply heating it up or cooling it. Therefore, the first hurdle the team had to overcome was fully understanding their building material and how to print it without it being ruined.

3D printing chocolate is hardly new. Alongside the fact its liquid and solid forms can be easily controlled, its extravagance as a product often means it is moulded into many different shapes, but these can come at the cost of making them more difficult to eat.

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Using 3D printing, mathematics and the engineering process, designing the "perfect" piece of chocolate may be possible.

The team claim to have been able to make the substance more malleable - without ruining it - by carefully heating it up, adding more chocolate, and cooling it down before adding it to the printer.

This allowed them to ensure the product would take any desired shape while guaranteeing the chocolate retained the same qualities.

Their first major print was a batch of S-shaped pieces of chocolate. Curved shapes present the toughest challenge as the chocolate could bend and break easily.

However, it being brittle but firm and not ruining the overall product was all part of the plan.

A small sample team taste-tested the chocolate, primarily to see how the chocolate would snap during biting. They determined that more cracks indicated a better quality product and looked to replicate the process.

Having shown that such an experience can be designed, the researchers now tried some different structures, searching for a structure where the number of cracks can be ‘programmed’ into the material.

They found that spiral patterns offer more "snapping" opportunities. They even developed a mathematical model to attempt to find the best possible eating experience.

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They ultimately hope this process could be used to allow for the overall eating experience to be increased, both by mathematically calculating pleasurable parts of eating such as the chocolate cracking but also by making the food easier to eat.

Using this process, particular types of luxury foodstuffs could be optimised to provide the "ultimate" dining experience. At the very least, the food we consume will become more enjoyable to eat.

The team also claims that study into edible metamaterials has never really been conducted, and further research could help "optimise" the interactions between humans and matter.

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