Ingredient of the Week: Dark Chocolate
First, a quick and dirty lesson on the varieties of chocolate:![]()
Photo by John Suh Eat them by the handful.
- Unsweetened chocolate is all cacao and no sugar, making it incredibly bitter. It is also known as baking chocolate and is usually found in the baking aisle of grocery stores in the forms of blocks or bars. The sugar is added separately when baking brownies or cakes.
- Bittersweet, extra dark, semi-sweet, and dark chocolate, at least in the U.S., are often used interchangeably and should contain no less than 35 percent cacao. (Bittersweet and extra dark tend to have more cacao, while semi-sweet and dark have more sugar.) Unlike the cacao, however, sugar content is not regulated so sweetness may vary between brands.
- Milk chocolate contains milk (duh) either in the form of powder, liquid, or condensed.
- White chocolate uses cocoa butter instead of cocoa solids as its main ingredient. As a result, white chocolate lacks many of the health benefits found in darker chocolate.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's dive into the most delectable of chocolates: the dark variety.
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