Types of Chocolate

Chocolate is one of those items that can be very intimidating, but if you know just a little bit of information, it's really easy to work with. I'm Rachael Teufel and in this lesson, we're gonna explore the different types of chocolate and why you should choose one over another. Chocolate is basically formed from processing a cacao bean and that bean is separated into two products. It comes into a cocoa or a powder, as well as a cocoa oil. So you have two products that come from the cacao bean and that basically is what makes up our chocolate. Now, a processed bean reveals this cocoa powder. It is 100% cocoa. There's nothing else added to it, no sugars, no oils, no processed anything, and that is a product that, eaten on its own, is not very pleasant. But it works extremely well inside of baked goods, things like brownies, cakes, cookies, those types of items work extremely well with this and typically you're incorporating in other oils in order to emulsify that back into a lovely chocolate. Moving into some of the other styles of chocolate. There are things added into the original cocoa powder. So in the case of this one, it is actually a 100% cocoa chocolate, which means it is not sweet at all. This is like the bitterest of chocolates. So when we are talking about chocolate itself, something that we are more commonly used to like chocolate bars, that has the cocoa powder and the cocoa oil mixed back together and the oil is what helps create that lovely mouth feel that melts in our mouth when we put it in there and just is absolutely delicious. Now, when we start talking about a fully unsweetened 100% cocoa bar or chunks in this case, this truly is just the powder and the oil together. There really isn't anything else added to this. It's not until we move into some of the dark chocolates and the semi-sweet chocolates, that then we have more of that cocoa oil incorporated in, but it also has milk solids and that is the piece that helps kind of tame down that super strong chocolate flavor. In addition to milk solids, we're also adding sugar and sugar is what helps, again, tone down that mouth feel and bring up some of the sweetness that chocolate allows for. So we basically go from a powder to a solid. It moves from a 100% pure chocolate to a semi-sweet, then to a milk chocolate and we even have a white chocolate. Now, a lot of people think that white chocolate is not actually chocolate and it depends on the white chocolate that you're utilizing. In this case, this is a true white chocolate. It has cocoa butter in it. That cocoa butter or oil, either way, is what makes it chocolate. Now, it doesn't have the typical powder, that cocoa powder incorporated into it, and so when people think about chocolate, of course, they think of the cocoa powder and that deep rich brown color. And obviously in white chocolate, we don't have that. If you are using a white chocolate and it is a pure white chocolate, you will have cocoa butter in it. That is what this yellowish white chocolate is. It is basically flavoring along with cocoa butter in order to incorporate a white chocolate. Now, something I don't have on set today is a newer chocolate. Within just the last few years, they've actually created a new one with Callebaut Chocolate and it's called ruby. And it's just made with a red cocoa bean or cacao bean, which just creates a really different unique flavor and color. So that's a new one to kind of look out for. If you haven't heard of it before, I suggest you try it. It definitely has a different flavor profile than the traditional cocoa that we're used to. Now, in addition to real chocolate, we have what's called a candy coating or a chocolate compound. Now, these types of chocolates come in white, which is what I really enjoy using because it's the purest of the colors, allows you really to gain that nice crisp white chocolate piece. But it also can be colored and you can start with white and color it with other types of chocolate oil food coloring. So this is a really nice substitute. The difference is two things. The first one is this is not made with real cocoa butter. The butter that is used in this is a palm oil and it is more readily available. It's a little cheaper. And so, when we're using a compound chocolate, we're typically decreasing our quality just a little bit. It's saving us a little bit of money, but it's still a very nice product to work with and it typically is my preference for the second reason, which is you don't have to temper chocolate. So let's talk for a moment about tempering. Tempering simply means that you are bringing your chocolate up to a certain temperature, which allows all of the ingredients in your chocolate to melt into a cohesive unit. You then wanna cool it, which brings all of those oils together. And then as you start to melt that chocolate and it's fully incorporated and it starts to cool down again, you want to actually raise it to a third temperature. And that temperature is the level in which all of the chocolate is a nice cohesive immersion. It simply means that the oils and butters and powders and all the ingredients are just in this nice pretty little union. And that's what makes our chocolate candy bars so crisp and clean looking. They've got a nice shine to them and it's just a beautiful product. When it comes out of temper, you can see in a couple of these chips here, it comes out of temper and starts to bloom. And simply what that means is the cocoa butter that are in these products has heated and started to release from the product itself and creates this coating that you can see. It very easily comes back together when you temper them. Now, that's how you know that these are actually made with real cocoa butter because that process, these probably were heated along the way in transport, release that cocoa palm, sorry, that cocoa butter and the butter has now just resolidified on the outside of our chocolate. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this chocolate. I know that some people sort of get a little nervous when they see that the product doesn't look like it's supposed to, but this is a natural things that happens with chocolate over time or with just simply being heated partially during the transport process and it just needs to be retempered. And all of that chocolate will look lovely and come back to a beautiful piece of chocolate. So don't stress over the blooming piece. Oftentimes, our compound chocolates will do the same thing. And again, it is a matter of that palm oil doing the same thing that the cocoa butter does. It doesn't actually take any temper to get this back. Any heating will do the trick. Then one thing with heating these is making sure that you're using the proper temperatures for each of your individual chocolates. And that's going to vary, not only by the type of chocolate regarding its cocoa level, it's also very dependent on the brand. So I always encourage you to check out online your brand and your style of chocolate to see what temperature you need to heat it to. But these are a variety of ways to incorporate chocolate into your different either chocolate pieces or baked goods, whatever you're using it for. It's really important to know what you're using and then why you might choose one over the other. So I encourage you to check out some of our other videos that are all about chocolate. We cover things from how to heat it properly to how to form it into different shapes, lollipops and cake bombs, and all sorts of other products. So take a peek and learn more about chocolate. And as always, be creative.