Chocolate

Chocolate starts as cacao beans that are fermented, dried and roasted. Dark and milk chocolate are made from the ground beans with sugar, plus milk in milk chocolate, while white chocolate keeps only the bean's fat, cocoa butter, blended with milk and sugar.

How to choose Chocolate

  • Cocoa percentage. The figure counts everything that came from the cacao bean, both cocoa solids and cocoa butter. European law sets 35 percent as the floor for anything sold simply as chocolate, and most of what remains in a dark bar is sugar.
  • Milk, white or dark. Dark chocolate is cacao paste and sugar, often with extra cocoa butter. Milk chocolate adds milk solids. White chocolate is cocoa butter, milk and sugar, and may also hold vanilla or an emulsifier, so it carries none of the brown cacao flavor.
  • Vegetable fats. EU rules let a maker replace up to 5 percent of the bar with fats other than cocoa butter, provided the label says so in bold beside the ingredients.
  • Form. Bars suit tasting and baking, filled pieces suit gifts, and cocoa powder or drinking chocolate goes into the cup.

About Chocolate

Chocolate is a food made from roasted cacao beans: dark and milk chocolate start from ground nib paste called chocolate liquor, and white chocolate from the bean's fat, cocoa butter. Under US standards that paste holds 50 to 60 percent cacao fat.

Most cacao is grown in a hot, humid belt within 10 degrees north or south of the equator. Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Ecuador grow the most, and West Africa as a whole supplies about 70 percent of the crop. In a factory the beans are roasted and their shells winnowed away. Pressing the ground paste squeezes out much of the cocoa butter and leaves a dry cake, still 10 to 22 percent fat in ordinary cocoa, that is milled into cocoa powder.

Keep chocolate somewhere cool and dry, away from sunlight. Serve it at room temperature, when the cocoa butter is soft enough to melt on the tongue.

At a glance

Made from
Cacao beans, usually sugar, sometimes milk
Main types
Milk, white, dark, gianduja
Main origins
Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Ecuador
Label terms
Cocoa solids percentage, vegetable fats statement

Chocolate questions

Is white chocolate actually chocolate?

Yes, by law, as long as it follows a set recipe. US rules require at least 20 percent cacao fat, at least 14 percent milk solids and no more than 55 percent sweetener. The fat is cocoa butter pressed from the bean, but the recipe leaves out the dark cocoa solids, so white chocolate tastes of milk and sugar rather than roasted cacao.

Why does chocolate get a gray or white film?

That film is called bloom, and it is harmless. Fat bloom is cocoa butter that has moved to the surface after heat or sunlight, and it looks like a dull sheen or blotches. Sugar bloom forms when damp air, often after a trip from the refrigerator, dissolves surface sugar that then dries into a gritty coat. Melting the chocolate and tempering it again, a controlled cycle of cooling and rewarming, brings back the shine.

Why are cacao beans fermented before they become chocolate?

Fresh beans taste nothing like chocolate. Farmers pile them in their sticky pulp for about five days for Forastero, the common variety, or two to three days for Criollo, a second variety, and the reactions inside develop chocolate flavor and color. The beans are then dried slowly from about 60 percent moisture down to roughly 7.5 percent so they keep.

Sources: US standards for cacao products (21 CFR Part 163); EU cocoa and chocolate directive; International Cocoa Organization.

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