Unsweetened, bittersweet, or semisweet chocolate depends mostly on the percentage of cacao the chocolate contains. As the cacao percentage increases, the chocolate itself will taste more intensely chocolatey and less sweet. Bittersweet chocolate is a variety of chocolate with a cacao percentage of around 70%.
In North America, the FDA requires bittersweet chocolate to contain at least 35 percent cacao, but most manufacturers make their bars with 50 to 60 percent. In Great Britain, the figure is somewhat higher, rising to 43 percent. The high cacao content makes the chocolate flavor deep and less sweet, with a slightly dry or crumbly texture
Bittersweet chocolate is essentially a mixture of chocolate liquor, sugar, cocoa butter, and sometimes vanilla. Often, lecithin is added as an emulsifying agent.
Bittersweet chocolate is darker than milk chocolate and semisweet chocolate. It is not quite as dark as true dark chocolate (which usually has a cacao percentage above seventy-five percent) or unsweetened chocolate. Bittersweet chocolate is used for most baked goods and desserts and for dipping and coating.
Bittersweet Chocolate
The word chocolate is derived from the Aztecs names for the tree, and for the drink they prepared from the beans. These words live on in Mexican today as ‘choclatl’ for the drink and ‘cacauatl’ for the tree. Chocolate was first cultivated as a crop, by ancient Mesoamerican peoples. They used cacao beans to create a frothy chocolate drink flavored with spices.
The most popular articles
-
Dark chocolate contains natural compounds that possess biological functions and serve as antioxidants. These compounds include polyphenols, ...
-
Chocolate soufflé, a delectable French dessert, is created by combining stiffly beaten egg whites with a luscious chocolaty base. The secret...
-
Chocolate spread is a popular topping choice for toast, pancakes, and waffles. It is commonly enjoyed during breakfast or used by profession...
-
Expeller cocoa butter is the fat prepared by the expeller process from cocoa beans singly or in combination with cocoa nib, cocoa mass, coco...
-
Cacao genotypes in Trinidad and Tobago are of a highly distinctive kind, the so-called “Trinitario” cultivar group, widely considered to be ...
Other interesting articles
-
-
Abdus Salam, a renowned physicist and Nobel Laureate, made groundbreaking contributions to elementary particle physics. Born on January 29, 1926, in Jhang ...
-