Formulation and evaluation of cold-extruded chocolate ganache for three-dimensional food printing

A novel approach for the production of chocolate ganache that could be cold-extruded using a three-dimensional food printer was proposed herein. To determine the optimal conditions, experiments were performed using various compositional ratios of whipped cream and cocoa powder. Although all whipped cream-based chocolate ganache was cold-extruded, irreversible fat separation occurs with temperature change. Among various whipped cream contents, chocolate ganache with 30% (w/w) whipped cream indicated the highest resolution and was therefore used to investigate the stabilization potential of chocolate ganache. Among various cocoa powder contents, chocolate ganache with 20% (w/w) cocoa powder showed the best results in terms of rheology, emulsion stability, and printing accuracy. We successfully demonstrated that cocoa powder not only increases the load-bearing capacity of chocolate ganache, but also serves as a “Pickering particle”. This system could be applied to materials or other three-dimensionally printed food products that require temperature stabilization.