Chocolate Makers Begin Labeling Products With Cacao Content
Have you started to see numbers and percentages appear on some of your chocolates and don’t know what they mean? Yup, American chocolate makers have begun labeling their bars according to cacao (pronounced KA-cow) content, a blend of cocoa solids and cocoa butter that combine to make chocolate, according to The St. Paul Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn.
Already common in Europe, this system brings to the industry a uniformity praised by bakers and chocolate experts. But they also worry that too few people understand it and are being misled by marketers pushing bigger-is-better attitudes. The article includes a guide to what cacao labeling can and can’t tell you, and what it means for the home cook.
In brief:
For eating, stick to less than 70 percent cacao. Because sugar tempers and enhances the flavor and texture of chocolate, bars with higher ratios can taste bitter and chalky.
For baking, chocolates be-tween 40 percent and 70 percent will work best in most conventional recipes. Chocolates above 70 percent may have textural problems in some recipes, such as a chocolate mousse cake.
If you can’t resist high cacao chocolate, use recipes specially formulated for it. Scharffen Berger, for example, has recipes on its Web site developed for its bars, including double chocolate cookies that use the company’s 99 percent cacao chocolate.
Don’t want to think about numbers? Stick within the 40 percent to 50 percent range for a good all-purpose chocolate.
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