Chocolates and its Variations

Posted by Paul on 15. December 2014

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Chocolates, the mood enhancer is a sweet dessert that is loved by all. Its passion goes beyond discrimination of age or mood. The sweetness or the slightly bitter taste it provides fascinates the chocolate lovers.

We will now explore the varieties of chocolates that may give you all an intense pleasure:

Cocoa Powder: The bitter powder is calorie less which consists of liquor chocolate. Cocoa powder gives the profound chocolate taste and is available in natural or alkalized variety. Natural cocoa powder is brown in color with an addictive flavor. It is recommended to use cocoa in recipes for cakes or chocolates to reduce its acidic content. Alkalized cocoa powder is dark in color and best to use with recipes that needs baking powder with it.

Unsweetened Chocolate: Also called baking chocolate. This pure chocolate liquor contains grounded cocoa beans that smells and feels like chocolate and has a taste that is bitter in nature and is not for consuming like a chocolate as it is used in cooking, when added with sugar to make it more acceptable while eating. Cocoa beans have exact amount of cocoa butter and solids that gives an enriching taste to the baked varieties of chocolate. Unsweetened chocolate is the basic variety of all ingredients except white chocolate.

Dark Chocolate: It is the bitter variety of chocolate that contains chocolate liquor, sugar, vanilla, cocoa butter, and an emulsifier. There is no milk content added in dark chocolates. The cocoa content included in dark chocolate bars can be 30% of sweet dark to 70-80% of bitter dark chocolate bars. Bitter sweet and semi-sweet chocolates can also fall under the category of dark chocolates.

Bittersweet Chocolate: Chocolate contains 35% of cocoa solids, whereas bitter sweet chocolates consist of 50% of sweet liquor with some bars asserting 70-80% of chocolate liquor. This chocolate has a bitter flavor than semi-sweet or sweet dark chocolate bars. The sugar amount in the chocolate is not controlled, so one brand’s bittersweet chocolate bar differs from other brands semi-sweet bars of chocolate.

Semi-sweet chocolate: It consists of 35% of cocoa solids and is sweet dark in nature, although it is sweeter than dark or bittersweet chocolates. The sugar amount varies from one bar to another.

Sweet dark chocolate: It contains milk solids but has the presence of sugar in a high level. Some brands of sweet dark chocolates have only 20-40% of cocoa solids.

Milk Chocolate: It has condensed milk or milk solids that are dry in addition to chocolate liquor and cocoa butter. Milk chocolate must have 10% liquor of chocolate. It has a sweet flavor and a light brown color and effective chocolate taste.

White chocolate: It gets its name from cocoa butter that is included in it but does not have any liquor of chocolate or cocoa products. It has a representative chocolate taste but tastes like vanilla that has 20% cocoa butter and milk solids 0f 14%.

A true chocoholic knows the importance of a pleasurable chocolate eating experience, also the differentiation between the varieties of chocolates.