TYPES OF CHOCOLATE AUMM!!!

DARK CHOCOLATE

Dark chocolate is also known as sweet, semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, depending on the chocolate liquor:sugar ratio. Dark chocolate is an eating chocolate that contains 15% to 35% chocolate liquor plus cocoa butter, vanilla, sugar or other sweetener and usually, lecithin as an emulsifier.  When expressed as a percentage of cacao on a bar wrapper, dark chocolate has a 50% or higher cacao content. Percentages of 70% or higher are classified as bittersweet chocolate. Who decides if a bar is 50%, 65%, 70% or other cacao percentage? It depends on how the particular cacao bean or blend best expresses itself and what the manufacturer wants to sell (or, what customers want to buy).

DARK MILK CHOCOLATE

A new category of chocolate which is milk chocolate with a higher than normal percentage of cacao, which gives these chocolates the deep flavor of a semisweet bar with the extra milkiness of a milk chocolate bar. Slitti, an Italian producer, makes a magnificent line called Lattenero (“dark milk”) in 45%, 51%, 62% and 70% cacao. The 70% bar, shown at right, looks as dark as any 70% cacao bar, but contains 2% milk solids so is actually milk chocolate. It has the milky flavor and smoothness without the sugary sweetness, because it is still 70% cacao, 27% sugar and 1% vanilla; whereas the 45% bar is a more traditional milk chocolate recipe with more sugar than cacao. See our reviews of the best chocolate.

DECORATION

The finishing stage of creating a bonbon or praline, where special patterns, halved walnuts or other nut embellishment, piped gianduja, etc. are added to the tops of the chocolates.

DEODORIZATION

A manufacturing process where the cocoa butter’s characteristic chocolate flavors are removed. While quality companies deodorize their cocoa butter to manufacture characteristic white chocolate, this process enables lesser companies to use poor quality and alkali-treated beans, which would produce unpleasant cocoa butter if not deodorized. See cocoa butter.

DESIGNATED ORIGIN CHOCOLATE

Chocolate made from beans from a specific locale. Also called origin chocolate and single origin chocolate. See our reviews of single origin chocolate.

DIAMANT

The French word for diamond, it refers to diamond-shaped chocolates.

DIPPING

Dipping is one of the four basic methods four basic methods of coating chocolate onto a center such as a caramel, nut or fruit; it was the original method of making coated chocolates and is done by hand by artisan producers. The other methods are enrobing, panning and molding or shell molding.

DRAGÉE

Dragées (drah-ZHAY) are sugar-coated almonds, but technically they are almonds encapsulated in a hard-shell coating, which we call Jordan almonds. The almonds can also have a chocolate coating under the sugar. They are a popular wedding favor, representing good luck. The term is also used to describe (2) tiny, round balls of sugar, often coated with edible silver or gold, and used to decorate baked goods; (3) sweet medicated lozenges. The commonality is sugar-coated or sugared. In French, the word also refers to nonpareils and is slang for bullets (small shot). Dragée à la gelée de sucre is a jelly bean.

DRINKING CHOCOLATE

Drinking chocolate is a product used to make hot chocolate. It differs from cocoa powder in that it is not a finely-ground product but bits of actual hard chocolate. It can take the form of shaved chocolate, discs, pistoles or tablets. This term dates back to the invention of the chocolate bar in 1847. Prior to then, all chocolate was consumed as a beverage, and was simply called “chocolate.” With the invention of the bar, the distinction between “drinking chocolate” (which was then only cocoa powder) and “eating chocolate” was made. The term was refined later in the 19th century, when the Swiss began to shave actual chocolate bars to mixed with hot milk or water, making hot chocolate, a richer drink than hot cocoa because of the butterfat in the bar.