Chocolate University Online Blog
Take a look at an ingredient label on a bar of chocolate. 9 times out of 10 you will see soya lecithin listed there.
Is using lecithin as an ingredient in chocolate important, and what is the benefit of using it?
 Lecithin is a phospholipid typically derived from soybeans or eggs. In its liquid form, it is a yellow-brownish fatty substance with a fairly thick viscosity.
Lecithin is very important to chocolate because it reduces viscosity, replaces expensive ingredients such as cocoa butter, improves the flow properties of chocolate, and can improve the shelf life for certain products.
Viscosity reduction, or making a coating thinner, can certainly be done by adding cocoa butter or other fats and oils, but it takes greater amounts to accomplish this and is therefore more costly.
What percentage of lecithin is used in chocolate?
If 3.0 % or 4.0% additional cocoa butter (could be even greater depending on the viscosity of the finished product) is needed to thin down a coating, only 0.5% of lecithin would be needed to get the same result. A little lecithin goes a long way.
However, there is a limit for lecithin. After 0.5%, the reducing effects on viscosity stop and can even start to go the other way and increase the viscosity.
Chocolate manufacturers know just how much to use in each formulation to maximize the advantage in viscosity.
Categories: chocolate Q&A, chocolate education
Tags: chocolate lessons, lecithin
 Every now and again you will come across an article, a chocolate bar, or a chocolate company that will draw attention to Bean To Bar processing.
Bean to bar means quite literally that the product was manufactured from the roasting and grinding of the bean to the tempering and packaging of the chocolate.
What’s so special about claiming to be bean to bar?
Many chocolates are made by purchasing already made chocolate couvertures that get melted down and used for coating or molding into truffles, pralines, or chocolate bars. While there is certainly nothing wrong with buying pre-made chocolate, there are advantages to controlling each step of the process.
Bean selection is critical from a quality standpoint. Cocoa beans that are fermented properly will contain the best flavors to come out during roasting. Creating proprietary bean blends will provide a distinct flavor for the companies’ products.
Roasting beans in-house will ensure a consistent signature flavor profile, and mixing and refining to formula specifications will make smooth, sophisticated chocolates.
Boasting a bean to bar product is something not all chocolate makers can claim. These companies have the strong belief that the quality of their chocolate is the best it can be when they control the entire process from bean to finished product.
You be the judge. Here is a small list of bean to bar chocolate companies to get you started on your tasting journey.
Valrhona
Hachez
Amedei
Cadbury
Nestle
Lindt
Scharffen Berger
Divine
Equal Exchange
Green & Black’s
Categories: chocolate education
Tags: chocolate bars, chocolate lessons, chocolate manufacturing, cocoa beans
In the opening post of this series I mentioned that there are three categories of beer that pair well with chocolates.
 The third group of beers include pale, bitter beers, such as India Pale Ales. These also tend to do well when paired with chocolate…
India Pale Ale was created in the 1820’s for the voyages between England and India. The three month voyage would have to cross the equator twice. So not only was the journey long, but it was also quite warm. Since time and high temperatures are bad for beer preservation, typical beers sent to India arrived in very poor condition.
The Pale Ales however were brewed to last up to a couple years. First, the beers are higher in alcohol, a natural preservative. The higher the alcohol content, the longer beer will survive. So the beer is made with a lot of barley malt so the increased starches become sugars and then ferment into alcohol.
Second, more hops are used. Hops, the flowering cone on the hop plant, are also a natural preservative. They make the beer bitter and impart a floral aroma. The more hops you use, the longer the beer will survive, but it will also become more bitter.
With these two factors combined, the beer could better survive the long, warm voyages. Strong, malty, alcoholic and bitter are ways to describe this style. Such beers tend to pair well with malt-flavor truffles, gourmet malt balls, and even a variety of chocolate and nut combinations. The malty flavors pair well together even though the bitterness of the beer and sweetness of the malt are opposites. This creates a contrast that works quite nice.
Pairing chocolate and beer is easier than pairing chocolate and wine, and the outcomes of the pairings are more predictable with beer than they are with wine. Try it for yourself!
Sue Langstaff, a member of the Primal Chocolate Club, has contributed this series about chocolate and beer pairing. Her company Applied Sensory, LLC offers analytical sensory services for the wine, brewing, and food industries.
Categories: chocolate education, chocolate pairings
Tags: beer, chocolate lessons, tasting
In the opening post of this series I mentioned that there are three categories of beer that pair well with chocolates.
 A second group of beers are the Belgian-style ales…
These beers are typically amber to brown in color, with high alcohol content (often greater than 8%) and are usually quite fruity in their aroma. Candy sugar (like a hard rock candy) may be added to the barley malt to increase the alcohol level without darkening the color or making it too malty.
The beer style is flavorful, yet smooth. The yeast used in these Belgian-style ales has a lot of underlying fruit tones, especially among the Trappist-style dubbels (doubles). As a result you might notice caramel, layers of banana, apple, apricot and peach, with cinnamon, nutmeg, or clove spices.
Fruit-flavored Belgian Lambic beers pair well with 60%+ cacao dark chocolate. The tartness of these fruity beers pairs nicely with the not-too-bitter dark chocolate. For an extra wow factor, combine any berry-flavored truffle or chocolate bar with dried berries and amber ale.
Amber ales are made from barley malt that, in some cases, is called “caramel malt.” This malt doesn’t really taste like caramel, but it does have an inherent sweetness and can give a nutty flavor.
Sue Langstaff, a member of the Primal Chocolate Club, has contributed this series about chocolate and beer pairing. Her company Applied Sensory, LLC offers analytical sensory services for the wine, brewing, and food industries.
Categories: chocolate education, chocolate pairings
Tags: beer, chocolate lessons, tasting
Recently, I was asked this question: “I love the taste of chocolate and orange but when I add orange zest to my coating it curdles. Why?”
 This presents an excellent technical lesson in working with chocolate.
The issue is moisture.
“Curdle” is not the correct term, but I think the idea is clear – chocolate will not function properly if moisture is introduced. Even the tiniest drop of water is problematic. When water and chocolate mix, it will “seize.”
Fresh fruit, including the peel of an orange, is moist and adding it to a chocolate coating spells disaster. For this reason, chocolate candy bars use dried fruit, candied fruit, or an oil based flavoring.
You can cheat a little (and get away with it) by adding a fruit zest or juice to a ganache and then enrobing the ganache in chocolate. If the candy is eaten within a few days, the moisture captured in the creamy center should not be a problem. Truffles tolerate this process the best. Don’t add the moisture to the coating. Instead, add it to the candy center.
Another common problem arises when dipping fresh strawberries in chocolate. Make sure you dry the outer skin completely before covering in chocolate. This will buy you some time before the moisture makes it way through the fruit and to the surface of the chocolate coating. When this happens, the moisture will destroy the appearance (with bloom) and texture (making it bumpy or grainy) of the surrounding chocolate.
Categories: chocolate education
Tags: chocolate covered fruit, chocolate lessons, working with chocolate
In the opening post of this series I mentioned that there are three categories of beer that pair well with chocolates.
 The first group for pairing includes dark beers such as porters and stouts…
These beers are made using a good deal of roasted or burnt barley malt. In fact, one of the burnt barley malts is even called “chocolate malt.” It doesn’t really have any chocolate in it, but rather the malt has been roasted or kilned until it acquires more of a chocolaty color.
“Chocolate stout” is a name brewers will sometimes give to certain stouts that have a noticeable dark chocolate flavor through the use of chocolate malt. In some cases, to give a real chocolate flavor, the beers are brewed with a small amount of actual chocolate; this can impart a powdered cocoa flavor or a creamy, dark, bittersweet chocolate flavor.
Brewers will also use a good deal of pale malt and some caramel malt in making porters and stouts. These beers provide roasted, toasted, caramel and coffee-like flavors that match well with any chocolate, especially a caramel truffle, a chocolate turtle with caramel and nuts, or a caramel-infused dark milk chocolate bar.
Strong stouts, especially Imperial stouts, can provide perfect matches to chocolate desserts. Classic dry Irish stouts such as Guinness are not a good match because they don’t have the proper intensity. Another stout that doesn’t work well is a Cream Stout. It’s simply too sweet due to the addition of lactose, causing a conflict with the sweetness of the dessert. Instead, you should find a beer that offers a little break from the sweetness of the dessert.
Sue Langstaff, a member of the Primal Chocolate Club, has contributed this series about chocolate and beer pairing. Her company Applied Sensory, LLC offers analytical sensory services for the wine, brewing, and food industries.
Categories: chocolate education, chocolate pairings
Tags: beer, chocolate lessons, tasting
When most people think about pairing chocolate with an alcoholic beverage the product they usually consider is wine. However, there are components in wine which can make these pairings difficult and often unpredictable.
Tannins in red wine can make dark chocolates seem more bitter, and the acidity in wines often does not balance well with the chocolate. Because of the variation in wine styles, even within varietals, it’s often difficult to generalize about ideal wine and chocolate pairings.
 This is not the case for beer!
Beer is every bit as complex as wine, perhaps more so. There are more than 60 recognized styles of beer. Styles of beer include stout, porter, India pale ale, bock, Oktoberfest, amber ale, lager, and many more.
While each style is unique, most brewers create beers within the style guidelines for that beer type. Beers within a style are recognizable cousins of each other, unlike wines within a wine varietal.
One of the things that makes a chocolate and beer tasting great is the fact that it is unusual, yet it works! Even people who say they don’t like beer, often do like chocolate so everyone can enjoy the event. Serious beer aficionados can find toasty, caramel, toffee, roasted, chocolate, coffee and fruity notes in beer. All these same notes can be found in chocolate.
Through years of experimentation, beer drinkers have discovered that a number of different beer styles can pair well with the unique flavors in, and sweetness of, chocolate.
Three general categories of beers usually do well when paired with a range of chocolate selections. We’ll take a look at each of these categories in upcoming posts.
Sue Langstaff, a member of the Primal Chocolate Club, has contributed this series about chocolate and beer pairing. Her company Applied Sensory, LLC offers analytical sensory services for the wine, brewing, and food industries.
Categories: chocolate education, chocolate pairings
Tags: beer, chocolate lessons, tasting
Recently I was asked about tempered chocolate that fails to keep a good shine and what can be done to fix that? (See comments on how to temper chocolate page.)
That’s a really good question. Concerns about the streaking and the lack of shine make me think about how temperatures, crystal development and the appearance of chocolate are all connected.
Properly tempered chocolate is shiny and uniform in color. When chocolate has streaks and does not shine, it indicates that at some point in the production process, the chocolate solidified without being in a properly tempered state.
I am sorry to have to get technical here, but see if you can follow this. Cocoa butter has to solidify or form crystals within a narrow range of temperatures. Tempering means all crystals become as identical in size and shape as possible and we can do this by controlling the temperatures.
There are essentially 3 major stages in the making of chocolates that you have to be particularly careful to achieve the right temperature:
Stage 1 – The Starting Product
If you make your own chocolate candy center, like toffee or ganache, make sure it is absolutely at room temperature before you dip in chocolate. If you don’t let it cool down enough, the heat will eventually push through your coating and cause it to lose its temper – either entirely or partially. On the flip side, if you let the center get too cold, you essentially “shock” the chocolate. This causes really BIG crystals to grow and the coating appears very dull, a flat finish.
If you mold your chocolates, use the molds at room temperature. This could be another source of unintended heat or cold introduced as the chocolate is solidifying.
Stage 2 – The Tempering Process
This is the most likely stage to produce streaking.
Agitating or stirring the chocolate during the tempering process is crucial to prevent streaking. Imagine adding red food coloring to white frosting to make it pink. If you stir in the coloring using only a few strokes, you will see streaks of red among the white. Continually stir and the frosting will eventually turn pink. Something similar happens when you temper chocolate without a thorough mixing. Temperatures along the bottom and sides of the tempering pan will be several degrees different than its center. Each temperature gradient grows different crystals at different rates. This causes light to bounce and bend irregularly and we see alternating streaks of light and dark chocolate after it dries.
Too much stirring will cause air bubbles to form and get trapped within the coating. Air bubbles cause crystals to form unevenly which gives the chocolate a grainy appearance on the surface.
If you use a tempering machine it may have separate milk, dark, and white chocolate settings. If not, you’ll need to set up the temperature and mixing parameters differently for each type of chocolate that you use. Milk chocolates temper at a lower temperature range than dark chocolates. Milk chocolates are tricky because there are different percentages of milk in any given brand or formulation of milk chocolate coating. The higher amount of milk (milk fat), the lower the temperature. White chocolates can be even more sensitive to temperature than milk chocolates.
Stage 3 – The Cooling Process
This is the most likely stage to produce dull looking product with no shine. The ideal temperature for cooling chocolate is between 65 and 68 F. The relative humidity should be 50% or less. I use a fan on a medium setting pointed right at my chocolates. The fan will lift the humidity out of the air surrounding them. Make sure the cooling tray is elevated off the counter top enough to let air circulate underneath and take away excess heat from the bottoms. A refrigerator hovers around 40 F and a freezer around 30 F – these temps are too low to encourage a nice shine. Rooms that heat up during the summer spell disaster for chocolate. Anything over 78 F is too warm and makes the chocolate soft and slightly sticky.
One obvious sign that the cooling process was unsuccessful is the formation of bloom. Bloom is a gray dusty film that covers the surface of chocolate. It can happen within hours, or days, after tempering and cooling.
To summarize, this particular tempering problem description appears to be a temperature issue at one of more stages of the process.
Categories: chocolate education
Tags: chocolate lessons, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, tempering chocolate, white chocolate, working with chocolate
Have you ever cut corners while cooking? Ever used short cuts that the original recipe had you make from scratch?
 I have. And why not? Most often those “changes” don’t affect the final product and it saves lots of time. Yes, sometimes I even buy frosting in a can (shhh, don’t tell my kids!).
One thing I have learned from my experience working with chocolate is that there are some short cuts that work and some that don’t.
Let’s consider the making of chocolate-covered strawberries. Can you cheat at making chocolate covered strawberries without anyone noticing?
Yes, but………
The real timesaver when making chocolate-covered strawberries would be to figure out how to quickly temper, or harden, the chocolate coating. Normally, the tempering process takes time and certain amount of skill gained by practice. Although there are ways to speed up the solidification of chocolate, there is no good way to fake a tempered chocolate.
There are many recipes you can get your hands on that tell you how to make chocolate-covered strawberries. And almost all of those tell you to melt the chocolate, dip the strawberries, and then put into them in the refrigerator to harden. Voila, done!
That method is indeed fast and easy but it only works if you eat the strawberries within seconds of taking them out of the fridge. If you want to put those remarkably delicious works of art out on a plate for your guests to admire before eating, the quality of the experience will certainly be diminished if you took the easy way out.
The chocolate coating should be tempered. This is not a step I recommend you skip. An un-tempered coating will start to melt in your hand almost immediately. It will bend when you bite it – giving you a soft and pasty feel in the mouth. The chocolate will melt quickly on your tongue and the flavor will be gone before you can savor it.
A tempered chocolate will give a crisp snap when you bite and won’t get all gooey on your fingers while you hold it. The chocolate will melt slowly in your mouth and allow a full blast of chocolate flavor to come through.
If the strawberries with un-tempered chocolate sit long enough, they may start to bloom. This means they will develop a white dust over the surface and look very unappetizing.
Try dipping strawberries in tempered chocolate and notice the difference. If needed, refer to my earlier blogs on how to temper chocolate. It will be worth the effort.
Categories: chocolate education
Tags: chocolate covered fruit, chocolate lessons, working with chocolate
Yes and No.
White chocolate is a blend of cocoa butter, milk, sugar, and vanilla. There is no chocolate liquor (chocolate solids) present, so, can you really call it chocolate? Perhaps not.
However, there is a legal definition for white chocolate to separate it from other “white stuff,” so perhaps yes.
According to U.S. regulations, white chocolate needs to be at least 20% cocoa butter and at least 14% total milk solids.
Beware – there are white chocolate look-a-likes out there!
If white chocolate doesn’t contain cocoa butter then it is made with a vegetable fat like partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil. A product containing this type of fat is called white confectionery coating and cannot be called white chocolate. White confectionery coating can also be called white almond bark or white candy coating.
I think white chocolate looks and tastes remarkably different than white confectionery. Compare these two items sometime, side by side, and you’ll understand what I mean.
Look at the difference. The first thing you will notice is that white chocolate looks pale yellow when compared to white confectionery. This color difference is due to the cocoa butter which is naturally more yellow in color than other vegetable oils.
Taste the difference. The cocoa butter in white chocolate provides a subtle, but distinct “chocolate” flavor which is lacking in white confectionery coating. More often than not, white confectionery coatings are sweeter and less milky tasting than white chocolate.
Now that you know the difference, which do you prefer?
Categories: chocolate education, fun chocolate facts
Tags: chocolate facts, chocolate lessons, white chocolate
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