Appreciating and Choosing Chocolate

Which chocolate to choose must always depend on your purpose: fine desserts or truffles, ganaches and sauces, hot chocolate, decorative molding, or artistic chocolate shape. It is also a matter of personal preference.

Your first step must be learning to read labels. Chocolate makers are increasingly aware that people want to know what is in their chocolate. Not all labels are ideally informative, but several companies are starting to provide data on some crucial matters. The most important facts, beside the origin of the beans, are total cacao content and cacao butter content.

Cacao content is what makes chocolate tastes like chocolate, no matter what its intended purpose. Standard supermarket candy bars typically have extremely low cacao content and are beefed up with fillers and sugars. Good eating bittersweet chocolates have at least the basic 35 percent cacao content. Premium chocolates (for both eating and cooking) will usually have much more, from 41 percent for a first-class milk chocolate to 70-75 percent for an intensely dark chocolate.

The only way to familiarize yourself with the range of possibilities is to buy and taste different chocolates, taking into account the amount of cacao listed. You will soon recognise the different intensities.

It would be easy to think that the best chocolate is the one with the highest cacao content, but it is not that simple. You must take into account factors such as the original beans and the handling they have received.

For example, if you are making hot chocolate, the richest product available may yield a disappointing result with an unsightly film of melted fat on top. This is the result of extra cacao butter added to some premium chocolate to decrease viscosity. The same too-rich chocolate may be perfect for coating truffles, where smoothness and fluidity are everything. A not so-smooth chocolate with great flavour and no added cacao butter might be great for hot chocolate.

A wonderful way to hone your tasting skills is to have a large sampling platter with at least a dozen chocolates made by different manufacturers and representing a wide gamut of flavours, textures and cacao contents. It will be your ultimate education in the subtleties of chocolate with company.