Who doesn't like the comfort goodness of chocolate in their desserts? Whether it's a batch of warm cookies or decadent cake, chocolate is often a major star. But if you have ever wandered through the baking aisle, you've probably noticed two basic varieties: chocolate chips and chocolate morsels. Although they may appear alike, they are not the same, and that makes all the difference in your final product.
If you have ever had any experience where you wondered why your cookies spread differently or why your melted chocolate didn't come out as you expected, perhaps it is due to whether you used chocolate chips or morsels. These little pieces of power chocolates are made for different uses in baking and knowing how to utilise them properly can improve your sweet creations.
Let's dive into the difference between chocolate chips and chocolate morsels and how you can use them to create chocolatey perfection.
What Are Chocolate Chips?
Chocolate chips are teardrop-shaped chocolates that most of us are familiar with. They usually are semi-sweet. Chocolate chips are designed with stabilizers like lecithin or oils which help preserve their shapes through baking. That is why, when you bake chocolate chip cookies, the chips don't melt completely; they soften but still maintain their characteristic shape within the baked good. Chocolate chips are specifically created to be baked, and their small size and structured shape make them perfect for folding into doughs and batters.
Chocolate chips are very versatile, between muffins and pancakes or cookies and brownies. They also melt up really well for drizzling or mixing into sauces, except they don't melt as smoothly as other types of chocolate due to the stabilisers. This makes them ideal for applications with visible chocolate pieces but less ideal for tasks that require silky, smooth melted chocolate.
What Are Chocolate Morsels?
A chocolate morsel is a more general term describing small pieces of chocolate, but unlike chocolate chips, they do not stay in the same form when cooked. Morsels can be created in milk, dark, white or any speciality flavour of chocolate and tend not to have as many stabilisers as chocolate chips, so they are also good for melting.
The other reason morsels are great is because of their composition-in situations where you want the chocolate to melt seamlessly into your dish, they're perfect. They can also be used in baking, but, as mentioned, they might blend more into the dough, so the chocolate will be nice and deep with no noticeable chocolate pieces left behind. When melted, chocolate morsels create smooth, velvety texture-a reason why they often come in handy in recipes like ganache, fondue, or chocolate glazes.
Use of Chocolate Chips
Use chocolate chips in any recipe that requires chocolate to retain its shape. Here's how you can best use them:
Cookies: The most obvious use of chocolate chips is in chocolate chip cookies. Even after baking, the chips retain their shape and give you chocolate pockets in every bite.
Muffins and Pancakes: The chocolate chips are especially good in batter-based recipes because they never sink to the bottom and keep their form when it is cooked.
Breads and Brownies: Stir some chocolate chips into the mixture for banana bread, brownies, or other baked goods for added texture and chocolate flavour explosions.
Toppings: Chocolate chips make a fabulous ice cream, yoghurt, or fruit bowl topping since they add crunch and sweetness.
How to Use Chocolate Morsels
Chocolate chips are great to use in recipes where you want melted chocolate that's smooth. Here is how they work:
Ganache: You melt the chocolate chips with cream to achieve a smooth, velvety ganache for cake or truffles.
Chocolate Glaze: The morsels melt relatively easy and make it great to drizzle over doughnuts, cakes, or pastries.
Fondue: When making chocolate fondue, the morsels melt nicely to yield perfect consistency to dip fruits, marshmallows, or biscuits.
Melt into Recipes: Using chocolate morsels melts the chocolate into recipes such as chocolate soufflés or molten lava cakes, wherein the chocolate needs to melt into the dish without its presence being overpowering.