When you are jonesing for chocolate, do you run for a milk chocolate Hershey bar or do prefer Dark Chocolate Dove pieces? Or do you love white chocolate or some other variation?
Most chocolate lovers have their preference for a major type of chocolate. The full list of types of chocolate includes not just white, dark, and milk chocolate, but also semi- sweet, bittersweet, or unsweetened in addition to cocoa. Chocolate is classified by types based on the proportion of cocoa, fat, and sugar used in particular formulations. Categories may vary throughout the world, depending on national regulation.
What Constitutes Popular Types Of Chocolate?
In the chocolate industry, chocolate is made with varying percentages of parts of the cocoa bean:
- Chocolate liquor, the ground or melted state of the nib of the cacao bean, comprised roughly equal parts cocoa butter and solids.
- Cocoa butter, the fatty component of the bean.
- Cocoa solids, the remaining nonfat part of the cocoa bean, are ground into a powder.
Each type of chocolate has different percentages of these components,
White chocolate is made with cocoa butter, sugar, milk, emulsifier, vanilla, and other flavors. The lack of nonfat ingredients from the cocoa bean contributes to its off-white color. With a mild, pleasant flavor, it is often used in desserts or in candy such as White Chocolate Drops or Hershey’s White Kisses.
Milk chocolate, a popular form of candy for bars, includes 10 to 20% cocoa solids including cocoa and cocoa butter, and more than 12% milk solids. Created in 1875 by Swiss confectioner Daniel Peter, the product uses condensed milk, invented by his neighbor Henri Nestle.
In the US, this most popular form of milk chocolate is made by Hershey. Its product has a particular taste due to the process of breaking down the milk and then stabilizing it through pasteurization.
Dark chocolate, with a high content of cocoa liquor, may contain 12% milk solids. Its forms may range from unsweetened when the percentage of cocoa liquor is closer to 100% to sweeter variations. Unsweetened chocolate is so bitter that it is only used for baking.
Sweet dark chocolate contains 35 to 45% cocoa solids and is similar in taste to semi-sweet chocolate that may include 40 to 62% cocoa solids. Often used for baking cakes, cookies, and brownies, it is good to eat. Popular for chocolate chips cookies, semi-sweet chocolate pieces are good right out of the bag. Ghiaridelli Squares, Sno Caps or Hershey’s Special Dark are popular variation of sweet dark chocolate candy.
Keeping Chocolate Pure
In an attempt to vary ingredients in chocolate, often by using more economical ones, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association lobbied the FDA in 2007 to change the legal definition of chocolate so they could substitute other fats and oils for cocoa butter, other sweeteners for sugar, and other substitutes for milk. The FDA held with the original definition so that in the U.S., products containing substitutes can only be referred to as “chocolatey” or labeled as “made with chocolate.”
The Popularity Of Chocolate
Chocolate is the most popular sweet treat in the world; chocolate lovers consume more than 3 million tons of cocoa beans a year, Demand is particularly high in the United States and Europe. It not only tastes good and lifts the mood, but when eaten in moderation (2-3 times per week) may reduce the chances of coronary heart disease, atrial fibrillation, stroke, and diabetes; one study on coronary artery disease suggested that eating an ounce of chocolate five times a week is optimum. Dark chocolate may have more benefit as it usually contains less sugar and less milk that dilutes the concentration of cacao, Because of the high sugar content, overconsumption is not recommended – but this can be challenging for a chocolate lover!
Whether you crave chocolate, well, because it’s chocolate, or you want the health benefits, Sweet Services, online bulk candy distributor, offers a wide range of chocolate treats.
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