WHAT IS PURE CHOCOLATE & WHICH CHOCOLATE ISN'T CHOCOLATE?

Since we just came out of the holiday season where you may have received or been given chocolates, I thought we would talk about what chocolate really is. Chocolate comes from a tropical bean known as the Cacao or Cocoa Bean; the name literally means 'food of the gods' and I know many of you agree!  So do I!  To get to the chocolate that is on our retail shelves, the first process these beans go through is roasting and cracking.  This process separates the shell from the meat of the bean.  We know this meat as nibs.  The nibs are then ground which melts the naturally present cocoa butter to produce a dark brown paste.  This paste is known as chocolate liquor. This means chocolate liquor is the first of the natural products that comes from the nibs or meat of the cocoa beans.  This is pure natural chocolate without any sugar or added ingredients.  When chocolate liquor is molded and allowed to solidify, you get pure, unadulterated chocolate.  This is the unsweetened chocolate which we readily find on our grocers shelves.  It is usually wrapped in thin papers and sold in boxes as baking chocolate.  If you are planning to bake or cook using chocolate, this is a recommended source.  At this point, you have total control over any sugars or additives going into your chocolate.  This chocolate still contains its natural cocoa butter and is approximately 50% cocoa butter.

To get Cocoa Powder, the other pure chocolate recommended for cooking and baking, the chocolate liquor or unsweetened chocolate is pressed to extract most of the cocoa butter leaving the dry cocoa powder.  This is a much more reduced-fat (it is not fat-free) product.

The extracted cocoa butter is used to produce other chocolate products such as semisweet and bittersweet chocolate.  To get these products sugar and some of the extracted cocoa butter is added to the chocolate liquor.  You can see where I am going here!  When you want chocolate, pay attention to which chocolate you are buying.  You can quickly go from a natural healthy product to one with all kinds of sweeteners and additives.

Bittersweet chocolate must contain at least 35% cocoa butter while semisweet, the most versatile and often used chocolate, can contain anywhere between 15% and 35%.  Learn to read the labels!Milk chocolate must contain at least 10% chocolate liquor or true chocolate.White chocolate is not true chocolate because it contains no chocolate liquor.  It consists of sugar, milk solids, and cocoa butter.

Cacao Beans