Gourmet Chocolate - Page 2
Eat a gourmet chocolate. Now eat a Hershey Kiss. Notice a difference? Of course you do, the two items are completely different. The Kiss was probably hard, maybe brittle. If you let it melt in your mouth, you may have perhaps noticed that it was a little grainy. If you bit it, you may have noticed that it broke into splinters in your mouth. You may have noticed that the Hershey Kiss was a little white on the edges, almost like it was eroding. It tasted good, it is chocolate, after all, but over-all it was a little unsatisfying. Your gourmet chocolate, on the other hand, was probably creamy, soft if you bit it, extremely smooth if you let it melt in your mouth. When you bit the chocolate it broke, obviously, but didn’t really splinter and it most definitely wasn’t brittle.
When you unwrapped chocolate, the edges were smooth and the color was consistent throughout. A big part of the reason for the difference in the taste, texture, and consistency between gourmet chocolates and mass market chocolates is the fact that makers of gourmet chocolate by and large use real chocolate liquor while mass market producers of chocolate use chemicals and substitutions for the chocolate liquor. Mass market producers do this because making chocolate liquor is a very expensive and time consuming process that significantly raises the cost of making the chocolate.
In order to make chocolate liquor, first, the beans must be roasted. After the beans are roasted, the beans are cracked open and the ‘nib’ or the inside of the bean is crushed until it turns into chocolate liquor. Another ingredient that accounts for some of the differences in the taste and texture between gourmet chocolate and mass market chocolate is the use of cocoa butter in gourmet chocolates. Cocoa butter is the fat or oil that is expressed from the bean as a by-product of making chocolate. Most mass marketers of chocolate use some cocoa butter in their chocolate, but supplement it with other types of fats. Gourmet chocolatiers on the other hand, use only or mostly cocoa butter in their recipes. Cocoa butter is unique because it melts at a temperature just below that of the human body. That is why a gourmet chocolate really does melt in your mouth.
