Essays on Chocolate Part 1

Chocolate manufacturers include many different kinds of ingredients in chocolate, some good, and some bad.

First things first; every chocolate bar will contain cocoa and sugar. Which comes first depends on whether it is a sweet chocolate or a dark, bitter chocolate.

Cocoa can appear under a variety of names. Chocolate liqueur is simply cacao beans ground into a paste and is essentially the same as cocoa. Sometimes there will be separate listings for cocoa powder and cocoa butter.

The ingredient to avoid is dutch process cocoa. Cheap cacao beans have an excessively sour taste that is neutralized by dutching or mixing the cocoa powder with alkali. While not bad per se, it indicates that the manufacturer is using cheap, low quality cocoa.

While there are no alternatives to cocoa, there may be a number of alternatives to sugar. Organic chocolate bars will use brown sugar or evaporated cane juice. These organic sugars impart a smoky, molasses-like flavor to the chocolate. If you like molasses then fine, but if not, stick to chocolate made with refined sugar.

There are a number of sugar substitutes used in sugar free chocolate. Since chocolate is heated during manufacture, artificial sweeteners cannot be the type that decompose when heated so aspartame (nutrasweet) is out. Expect to see artificial sweeteners like maltitol and sucralose. Unfortunately necessary for some consumers, artificial sweeteners never really taste like sugar and many people find that they impart a chemical taste in any food to which they are added. If you are trying to avoid sugar in your chocolate, try looking into an ultra-dark chocolate with cocoa content above 70%. At that percentage, a 2 ounce bar contains less than 17 grams of sugar.

Most good chocolate will include vanilla. As any good baker knows, vanilla acts to brighten and enhance the chocolate flavor. Some chocolate manufacturers will also specify where their vanilla comes from such as Bourbon Vanilla (Madagascar). While some chocolate manufacturers disdain vanilla, natural vanilla is a fine ingredient to find in chocolate.

Natural vanilla has a cheap artificial substitute, vanillin (4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde). Vanillin is a component of natural vanilla, but when separated from the complex mixture that is natural vanilla, vanillin imparts a chemical taste to chocolate and it should be avoided.

The final ingredient that you should see in chocolate is lecithin or soy lecithin. Lecithin is an emulsifier. It keeps the cocoa butter from separating from the cocoa solids and sugar in chocolate. When this happens the chocolate blooms. Bloomed chocolate is perfectly palatable, despite its grayish color, though the texture will be hard and brittle. Some chocolate manufacturers don’t use lecithin. They avoid soy lecithin to guarantee that their chocolate is GMO free or to improve the smoothness of their chocolate. However, it’s a common ingredient and many fine chocolates include it with no problems.

Milk chocolates will also include milk powder. Milk powder is used for two reasons; to give the chocolate bar a creamy texture and to act as a filler replacing more expensive cocoa butter.

Other fillers have been used over the years to make the more expensive chocolate go farther. You’ll see hazelnut cream, almond cream and other nut creams and butters. Collectively known as pralines, each nut cream gives chocolate a distinctive flavor and texture.

Moving on to chocolate truffles, the ingredients you should avoid are things like hydrogenated vegetable oils and tropical oils (like coconut oil). Traditional truffles are made with unsalted butter and always taste better than those made with hardened vegetable oils.

Chocolates with fruit fillings have a shelf life limited by the filling. Store bought boxed chocolates are loaded with preservatives and yet, always seem to be a bit off anyway. Unfortunately, you can’t avoid the preservatives unless you go to a real live chocolatier. Even then, you have to check ingredients. Some chocolatiers will still use preservatives to avoid having to make their chocolates fresh every day.

Note that plain chocolate bars should not have any preservatives. Plain chocolate has a long shelf life, sometimes more than a year. There is too little moisture in chocolate for it to spoil. What limits the shelf life of chocolate are things like nuts and fruit fillings mixed into the chocolate. And since chocolate doesn’t last very long once you get it home, the only reason to have preservatives in chocolate is to extend its shelf life in the store.