| Chocolate Most People love chocolate. Dark and bitter, pale and milky, sometimes chocolate is the only way to satisfy. Today’s chocolate market puts the term ‘globalization’ to the test! In any average grocery store you can find at least 6 different varieties of just cocoa mass percentage. Enter a gourmet store and you will find those 6 divvied up among geographic regions, processing methods, single or multi origin, with blends and fillings galore. The Chocolate of the modern world is essentially made up of just a few ingredients: sugar, milk, cocoa bean mass & liqueur and butter or oil. How could so few ingredients make so many innumerable variations? This is how it works: The Cocoa pods, mostly from Latin America and Africa, containing cacao beans, are harvested. The beans, together with their surrounding pulp, are removed from the pod and left in piles or bins to ferment for 3-7 days. The beans are then dried in the sun or in a processing plant. Once dry they are roasted, graded and ground. Cocoa butter is removed from the resulting chocolate liquor either by being pressed or by the Broma process. Chocolate Liqueur does not contain alcohol. The Broma process is a method used to remove cocoa butter from cacao beans by hanging a bag of ground cacao beans in a warm room, the cocoa butter would drip off, leaving behind a residue that can then be converted into ground cocoa. This technique is now a common method for the production of cocoa and chocolate in the United States. More cocoa butter is extracted by using the Broma process than using a hydraulic press, making it easier to dissolve into liquids. Broma process cocoa also has a more intense taste than Dutch process cocoa, as no alkalis are added to the cocoa.The residue is what is known as cocoa powder. Okay, so now we have our components. How do you decipher what you might like and what might be very wrong? Here is my chocolate cheat sheet for your indulgent intellect! Very Dark Chocolate A combination of chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, sugar and milk or cream. Milk chocolate must contain between 70-90% chocolate liquor. It is bitter, very precise chocolate flavor and very low sugar. It is best to consume only single origin chocolate at this concentration. Dark Chocolate A combination of chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, sugar and milk or cream. Milk chocolate must contain between 60 - 70% chocolate liquor. It is less sweet and has a true chocolate flavor, Most Dark chocolates contain fewer if any chemical additives. Bitter Sweet Chocolate & Semi Sweet Chocolate both chocolates must contain at least 35 % chocolate liquor. After this requirement is met, the individual manufacturers can add more chocolate liquor, as well as sugar, additional cocoa butter, milk solids, lecithin and flavorings, such as vanilla and vanillin. In past years, it was safe to generalize that European bitter chocolate was referred to as "bittersweet" and American chocolate was referred to as "semisweet". Milk Chocolate A combination of chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, sugar and milk or cream. Milk chocolate must contain at least 10% chocolate liquor and at least 12% total milk ingredients. White Chocolate Made from the same ingredients as milk chocolate (cocoa butter, milk, sugar) but without the nonfat cocoa solids. In 2002, FDA established a standard of identity for white chocolate. White chocolate must contain at least 20% cocoa butter and 14% total milk ingredients. The percentage refers to the total content of ingredients derived from the cacao (or cocoa) bean. % Cacao = chocolate liquor + cocoa butter + cocoa powder. Generally, there is an inverse relationship between the % Cacao and the amount of sugar in a bar. For example, a 60% Cacao dark chocolate bar has more sugar than a 72% Cacao dark chocolate bar. Unsweetened baking chocolate is a 100% cacao product, has no added sugar, and will have a very bitter flavor. Some studies have also observed a modest reduction in blood pressure and flow mediated dilation after consuming approximately 100g of dark chocolate daily. However, consuming milk chocolate or white chocolate, or drinking milk with dark chocolate, appears to largely negate the health benefit. Chocolate is also a calorie-rich food with a high fat content, so daily intake of chocolate also requires reducing caloric intake of other foods. Blends and Fillings What a chocolate is blended or filled with can vary as much as the way the chocolate is made. Usually these varietals must be experimented with to determine what your palate prefers. That said it is important to realize that you really do get what you pay for in the chocolate world. A beautifully crafted chocolate blended with chemical flavorings or inferior alcohol will ruin the taste of the chocolate. Chocolates that seems to leave a film in your mouth, aka coating your palate, or sting the back of your throat are not worth eating. However chocolates that hit several points on your tongue and you instinctively want to savor are worth every penny - or in some cases airplane tickets! For me the blending and filling process have a lot to do with what concentration of chocolate taste each type offers. I love dark chocolate with grappa, lemon, blueberry or cranberry. I like bittersweet with spiced rum, orange or caramel and I like milk chocolate with passion fruit and raspberry. Maybe you have a chocolate tasting and blending party in your future? Happy Eating! RETURN TO HOME PAGE RETURN TO RESOURCES PAGE |
