The Bieb explains everything you need to know about cocoa percentage
This post originally appeared on my site Chocolate Noise! Subscribe to the series here, and preorder my book, Bean-to-Bar Chocolate: America’s Craft Chocolate Revolution, coming out in September 2017!
So you’re at the store trying to choose a chocolate bar, and it’s hard to make up your mind, because cocoa percentage seems like a mystery. You’re like, “What do you mean?”
Here’s the answer: Think of a chocolate bar as a giant Justin Bieber.
Say the label reads “70 percent” on the label. That means 70 percent of it is made up of cocoa, kinda like how 70 percent of Justin Bieber is his hair (don’t go and get angry at all of my honesty).
The other 30 percent of him consists of everything that is not hair; similarly, the other 30 percent of the chocolate bar consists of everything that is not cocoa. Ingredients like:
Dance moves (i.e., sugar)
And music (i.e., inclusions like almonds, sea salt, raspberries)
(Is it too late now to say sorry?)
Now, let’s go back to the hair. It is after all, 70 percent of the equation, and we like the way it looks that much (oh, baby, you should go and love yourself). It changes from day to day, like how recipes change depending on the chocolate maker. J-Beeb’s hair consists of two main ingredients, like how cocoa naturally consists of two main ingredients. JB’s hair is…
mostly Ellen Degeneres (cocoa solids)
with a hint of Eminem (cocoa butter)
Photo courtesy Flickr user groupthing
Cocoa solids are the part of the cocoa beans made up of nonfat solids (the most common example is cocoa powder). Cocoa butter is the natural fat in cocoa beans, and it makes chocolate feel smooth and creamy. If there’s a lot of it in a given recipe, the resulting chocolate will feel smoother and creamier in your mouth than another bar with less cocoa butter. That’s why 70 percent doesn’t always taste and melt the same way.
Takeaway: Cocoa percentage, like Justin Bieber, doesn't have anything to do with quality but is rather about ingredients.
But no matter the chocolate, it’s good in my book. Because I’m a Belieber, and I won’t give up (nah-nah-nah), and I’ll never let you (I mean chocolate) go.
Gif courtesy WiffleGif
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