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For a baking enthusiast, chocolate is one of the favorite ingredients. Whether you're baking your famous brownies, cakes, or cookies, the right type of chocolate can bring out a lot of difference between a good dessert and an irresistible one. However, with so many kinds of chocolates hanging around, dark, milk, white, semi-sweet, etc, it gets pretty confusing which to use. Each one has its properties, flavour, and application in the baking. Well, that's probably the reason why your chocolate cake never tastes similar to your favourite bakery. Here's a guide to help you find your way through this world of baking chocolates.
Dark Chocolate
Dark chocolate is the favourite of every baker for its rich flavouring capability and versatility. It is also intense in taste because it contains a higher percentage of cocoa solids and less sugar. Dark chocolate comes in several degrees of bitterness depending on the amount of cocoa contained in it, ranging from 50% to 85%. The higher the cocoa percentage, the more bitter and less sweet it becomes. It is ideal for dense, decadent desserts like flourless chocolate cakes, brownies, and ganaches, where you want a pure flavour of chocolate with little sweetness.
Milk Chocolate
Milk chocolate tastes mellow, and creamy since it contains milk solids. As an alternative, it has a lower percentage of cocoa from 30 to 50 per cent, which makes it sweet and less strong. The variety of milk chocolate is used frequently in recipes where a slightly dull chocolate flavour is desired, such as milk chocolate chip cookies or as a coating for cakes and other confections. It does, however, have a lower melting point than the other forms, which can make it tricky to use in some recipes that demand tempering.
White Chocolate
Technically speaking, white chocolate is not actually chocolate as it does not contain cocoa solids. It is a mixture of cocoa butter, sugar, and milk solids combined, giving it a rich, creamy flavour without the bitterness of regular dark chocolate. White chocolate is best used in recipes wherein you want to have a delicate flavour of butter, such as in white chocolate mousse, cookies, or as a drizzle on cakes. Since it contains no cocoa solids, it tends to be much sweeter than any other type of chocolate. This is also very often used as a foil for tart flavours in fruit-based desserts.
Semi-Sweet Chocolate
Semi-sweet chocolate constitutes an in-between range between milk and dark chocolates for the level of sweetness and cocoa. It typically holds 40% to 60% cocoa. This type of chocolate is one of the most used in baking because the taste is neither too sweet nor too bitter. For its excellent balance of flavour s, it's great when used with chocolate chip cookies, cakes, and frostings.
Unsweetened Chocolate
Unsweetened chocolate is pure cocoa mass without any added sugar. It is extremely bitter on its own. Still, it's a necessary ingredient in recipes that require you to control the sweetness. Brownies or dense chocolate cakes are examples of these. Being pure chocolate, it is deep in flavour with a robust flavour that mixes well with sugar and other sweeteners added during the baking process. It isn't to be used in a finished dessert, but it does allow for creating very rich, decadent dessert mixes.
Cocoa Powder
This is one of the most versatile baking staples. It consists of cocoa beans that have had most of the cocoa butter extracted from them. There are two kinds: natural and Dutch-processed. Natural cocoa powder has a more intense, bitter flavour and is more acidic as opposed to Dutch-processed cocoa, which isn't acidic, and is milder due to an alkalizing process. It can be used in cakes, cookies, and brownies for that deep chocolate flavour without adding excess fat and moisture.
