Chocolate and Cacao

Years ago, you would go to the store to buy a chocolate candy bar and have a choice of dark or milk. The same was true for baking you could go with bittersweet, semi-sweet, dark, or milk. Today, chocolate has completely changed. While you will still find traditional choices, the options have expanded. For instance, it is common to find various foods and drinks made with cacao but most people have no idea what this is.

Cacao

Cacao, which is pronounced as K-Cow, is actually a nice blend of cocoa butter and cocoa solids. This balance is absolutely, delicious and a favorite choice among people living in European countries. However, when shopping around for chocolate in the United States, it is becoming more and more common to see cacao on the label. Even so, understanding the content, as well as what makes for good chocolate is a little confusing.

Confection

Look at standard chocolate for starters. This substance is a confection, which means it is a blend of sugar and cacao products. The only difference would be with milk chocolate, which contains dairy. The thing to remember is that the blend of the ingredients would change not only taste but also texture of the chocolate, as well as the way in which it responds during baking. Because of this, we see labeling identifying the ratio of cacao used in the product.

Assumptions

Unfortunately, some people believe that the higher the content of cacao in chocolate the better the quality or more intense the flavor. However, this is not necessarily the case. For instance, when you see percentages of cacao, the representation is of total cacao. In other words, the chocolate could contain varying ratios of the butter and solid, which would obviously change the taste and texture of the chocolate. Therefore, you cannot simply look at the percentage and assume anything.

Other Factors

While cacao can influence the flavor of chocolate, a higher number does not mean greater or lesser quality. Instead, the blend, origin of the beans, and even the way in which the beans are roasted would have a greater effect on the chocolate's flavor. The thing to keep in mind is that if you start with high quality beans that are roasted to perfection, then obviously you would end up with some of the finest chocolate possible. This would be possible even if the cacao ratios were low.

Labeling

To try to clear up some of the confusion while educating consumers, new labeling associated with cacao is being added to chocolate products. Although federal guidelines are vague, the goal is that by providing consumers with information specific to cacao, buyers have some understanding of what they are purchasing. In addition, federal guidelines state that depending on brand and blend, chocolate should contain somewhere around 35% cacao.

Basic Guidelines

To help you understand what to buy, if you want chocolate to eat, you would have a much better flavor by going with products that contain 70% or less cacao. What happens is that when sugar is added to eating chocolate, the flavor, and texture of the chocolate is magnified. Therefore, if you were to choose something with more than 70% cacao, the flavor would be bitter and the texture chalky. Now, for baking chocolate, choose products with a level between 40% and 70%.