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When you are baking you will find that you will be using the entire gamut of chocolates: unsweetened, bittersweet, semisweet, milk, and white. What makes chocolate, chocolate is the presence of chocolate liquor, made from roasted, blended, and ground cocoa bean nibs. Unsweetened chocolate is pure chocolate liquor; bittersweet chocolate is a blend of chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, sugar, and vanilla; semisweet chocolate is bittersweet chocolate with a greater quantity of sugar added to the mixture; and milk chocolate is a blend similar to that used for bitter- or semisweet with the addition of milk solids. White chocolate derives its taste from cocoa butter, milk solids, sugar, and vanilla. When buying it, look for a brand that contains cocoa butter – that’s what will give you the flavor you want. By law, white chocolate that does not contain cocoa butter cannot be called chocolate.
Use the best-quality chocolate you can and choose a chocolate you would like to eat out of hand. The kind you start with is what you end with. Baking does not change the chocolate’s flavor enough to mask inferior deficits.
Chocolate should be stored in a cool, dry cupboard, not in the refrigerator or freezer, where it will attract unwanted moisture. Once opened, chocolate should be wrapped in foil. Stored properly, unsweetened, bittersweet, and semisweet chocolates can be kept for about a year. Chocolate that develops a white cloud or a grayish look, called bloom can still be used. The bloom is when the cocoa butter has separated, but will work just fine when melted.
Melting Chocolate Unsweetened, bittersweet and semisweet chocolates are a little difficult to melt and white and milk chocolates even more when it comes to melting. The simplest, surest way to melt chocolate is to break or cut it into even pieces and place pieces in the top of a double boiler over, but never touching, about an inch of simmering, not boiling, water. Keep the double boiler over very low heat and stir the chocolate frequently. Remove from heat as soon as the chocolate has melted, stir until smooth. Keep in mind that water is chocolate’s worst enemy. If you get even a drop of water into the chocolate while it’s melting, the chocolate will seize and you’ll have a rough, dull, unusable mass. If a recipe calls for melting chocolate with liquid, you start with the liquid first you’ll be fine, it’s only mid-melt moisture that seizes chocolate.
Cocoa Once all the cocoa butter has been removed from roasted and ground cacao beans, the dried cake that’s left, called cocoa liquor, is ground into fine powder, cocoa. Cocoa powder is bitter because it contains no sugar, but adds a deep, rich chocolate flavor to baked goods and other desserts. Dutch-process cocoa is cocoa that’s been treated with an alkali to neutralize its acidity. It is darker in color than natural cocoa and gives baked goods a deeper chocolate flavor.
Some baking recipes call specifically for one type of cocoa, and in that case it’s important you don’t substitute one for the other, Since natural cocoa is acidic, it needs some alkali to work properly, and baking soda is usually used for that purpose. But if you substituted Dutch-process cocoa for natural, you would need an acid such a baking powder, not an alkali, to balance it.
Unsweetened Chocolate has the most concentrated of chocolate flavors in solid form. It is made from chocolate liquor with some of the cocoa butter added back, and nothing else. After the two are combined, the mixture undergoes a lengthy process, called conching that can last from several hours to a week and mixes, kneads, and beats air into the chocolate, giving it a smooth texture. Unsweetened chocolate contains no sugar and is as bitter as cocoa. It must always be melted before being used in cakes, cookies, or brownies. It has a fairly high fat content, about 14 grams per ounce. Baker’s and Hershey’s are the two most common brands at the supermarket.
Bittersweet Chocolate Is unsweetened chocolate with the addition of some sugar and vanilla flavoring, bittersweet chocolate is wonderful for baking because of its strong chocolate flavor. Some imported brands, contain anywhere from 55 percent to 70 percent cocoa solids. American brands contain far less, around 35 percent. Whenever possible use imported brands of chocolates.
Semisweet Chocolate has a lower percentage of cocoa solids and more sugar than bittersweet chocolate. Unless you like chocolate on the bitter side, semisweet makes the best eating chocolate. I would strongly recommend buying the European brands because of their superior flavor.
White Chocolate isn’t really chocolate; but cocoa butter mixed with sugar, vanilla, milk solids, and emulsifiers, poured into molds, and solidified. Inferior brands of white chocolate substitute vegetable shortening for the cocoa butter, so always check the label. Avoid the white chocolate coating sold in supermarkets; it has a waxy consistency, a granular texture, and very sickeningly sweet taste. Use instead the Swiss Lindt white chocolate or the Belgian Callebaut white chocolate.