Cocoa butter is the pale, ivory-yellow fat pressed from roasted cacao beans — the fat phase of all real chocolate and couverture, and a core pastry and confection building block. Nearly flavourless but faintly cocoa-scented, it is prized less for taste than for its remarkable melting behaviour: brittle and waxy at room temperature, it turns to liquid just below body heat, giving chocolate its snap, gloss and melt-in-the-mouth quality.