Chocolate comes in all shapes, sizes and flavors imaginable.
The variety that chocolate naturally comes with makes it easier to understand
why it is loved by many, and this also explains why chocolate is so popular
among people of all ages.
Most people love chocolate, and some are even obsessed by
it. Its distinct and delicious taste is something that you usually can’t taste
anywhere else, and it’s also quite easy to blend chocolate into other types of
food to make it chocolate-flavored. This means that people are not just
restricted to chunks or bars of chocolate. You can have chocolate ice cream,
truffles, a chocolate-flavored drink, chocolate-covered pastries, and all of
the other delectable and mouth-watering choices. Chocolate can transform any
bland food item (desserts) to something amazingly delicious. There are however
different types of chocolate that people can sample and enjoy. Here are some of
the most common types:
1) Unsweetened Chocolate Bars
Since chocolate comes from ground cocoa
beans, chocolate in its purest form is actually bitter. When you look at it and
smell it, it’s pretty much the chocolate that we are so used to, but it’s not
really for consumption because it’s too bitter in its pure form. Unsweetened
chocolate is used for baking and cooking, and it’s also the most basic
ingredient used to create all the other types of chocolate.
2) Dark Chocolate
Of all the chocolate types, this is the
consumable chocolate that has the most health benefits. The cocoa content of
dark chocolate can range from 30% (semi-sweet dark chocolate) to something as
high as 70-80% (bittersweet chocolate). The extremely dark chocolate bars already
have a bittersweet taste, but a lot of people actually prefer it precisely for
this reason. Dark chocolate is made of chocolate liquor (the pure form that
unsweetened chocolate is made of), cocoa butter, sugar (in varying levels) and
the emulsifier lecithin.
3) Sweet Dark Chocolate
This type of chocolate is still dark
because it doesn’t have milk mixed into it. However, the high sugar content
makes it a bit sweeter than bittersweet or even semi-sweet dark chocolate,
which makes it very delicious for many. Sweet dark chocolate can contain as low
as 20% cocoa.
4) Milk Chocolate
A favorite of many and as the name
suggests, this is what happens when dark chocolate is infused with milk. Some
chocolate makers use milk solids, while others use condensed milk. Of course
milk chocolate also contains the usual ingredients found in dark chocolate –
chocolate liquor, cocoa butter and emulsifiers. It’s also easier to mix in a
lot of other flavors with milk chocolate.
5) White Chocolate
This type of chocolate doesn’t really have
that distinct chocolate taste because it doesn’t contain cocoa unlike the other
chocolate types. The name is derived from the cocoa butter that white chocolate
contains, but because it doesn’t contain chocolate liquor, it’s never brown in
color, and it doesn’t taste like chocolate. White chocolate contains mostly milk
solids.
