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How do you choose a good gourmet chocolate for your chocolate cake / cookie or for another processed food that use chocolate? Well, of course each people has different preference of their own choice of chocolate, but below are some points to considerate for the finest pleasure

1. Appearance

The appearance should be evenly coloured, whether it is a mahogany brown, deep red, or black; and it should be smooth without cracks, air holes, streaks, blemishes or sugar bloom. Darker is not necessarily better, as a dark colour could mean the beans have been over-roasted. In fact, many top chocolatiers prefer to see a red hue to their chocolate (with dark chocolate), a rich flavour and well processed.

2. Touch

Chocolate should be silky to the touch, not sticky, and begin to melt if held between your fingers for a few seconds. Cocoa butter is solid at 33C, but melts at 34C. The speed of melting is an indicator of cocoa butter content, the better the quality the faster it melts.

3. Aroma

The smell of chocolate is a key part of the experience; it’s where the taste experience starts. Sweetly chocolaty, with a well-balanced yet complex fragrance – if the chocolate is good quality. Scent flavours to note are vanilla, and tones of berry and caramel. If you smell any off-notes in the fragrance, be wary, there should be no sour notes.

4. Feel or snap

When you break off a piece of the chocolate, you can sense a lot about the quality of chocolate produced by the chocolatier. A clean snap, a snap with crispness, reveals that the cocoa butter quantity is high. Though not an indicator of chocolate taste quality, it does indicate if cheap vegetable fats have been used. Chocolate with a high level of added vegetable fats and other cheaper fats crumbles or splinters. It does not have the same clean “snap” that cocoa butter gives your chocolate, together with a distinctive tree-bark-like texture.

5. Mouth-melt / texture

- The chocolate should start to melt straight away.

- It should not be grainy or gluey. If the chocolate is “waxy” or “clacky” it can indicate that vegetable fat has been substituted for cocoa butter. If the chocolate has a very high vegetable fat content, then it’s not real chocolate.

6. Flavour

Good quality chocolate has a bitter-sweetness, fruity – spicy, with a depth of sensual and subtle mellow flavours with a good balance of acidity and sweetness. The complex flavours are dependent on cacao bean quality, the way the beans were processed, and the skill of the blender, – and that is before it is made into the chocolate bar or the product you taste and bake with.

7. Aftertaste

Good quality chocolate leaves a clean but complex lingering taste in your mouth for many minutes, even up to half an hour or more later.

However, chocolates are still effected by which country you are living in coz that’s where the ingredients are come from and mostly sold in market.

More like tips to eat & choose the fine chocolate to be eaten also right

Well, let’s practice it the next time you choose your gourmet chocolate.

Lots people know fondue as chocolate fondue when it actually has quite variety in ingredients & from the term meaning itself, let we start with this article by cutting out the word.

Got this explanation from : http://www.thefreedictionary.com

fon·due also fon·du

so know we know that fondue is the sauce to practice / if I may say the style of eating of dipping the food into sauce, and not just the term for another cooking style called : chocolate fondue
(well,, at least that’s what I thought before I did this research :p)

For summary: the concept of fondue is to dip a small portion of food ( usually speared at the end of a stick) into a heated sauce ( could be chocolate sauce, beef sauce, whatever kind of sauce).

(realizing all these make me remember that fondue has already existed from long time ago coz Asterix & Obelix  have been eating this way when they were traveling to Swiss to get the Edelweiss flower,, hahaha :p)

Find the way to make chocolate fondue

I like to eat chocolate, but I also afraid of getting fat & eating too much sweet & sugary foods. So to satisfy my crave for chocolate, I choose more for dark chocolates nowadays.

We all know chocolate has lots of benefits, dark chocolate coz it is made more from pure chocolate, therefore it contains more ingredients.

Some benefits are:

It makes a person feel good. It stimulates the body to produce endorphins. It also contains substances that act as stimulants, making a person feel more alert and ready for action. It even contains a substance called serotonin, which can help to prevent depression.

Dark chocolate contains antioxidants, we all know antioxidants is one of the substance to prevent / slowing aging, prevent cancer and those anomaly cell breaking. It was claimed that dark chocolate contains more antioxidants than fruit such as strawberry.

Dark chocolate also was said help to lower cholesterol. It can reduce the bad type of cholesterol, referred to as LDL.

The other compound found in dark chocolate called  phenols is claimed to be able to help lowering high blood pressure.

So, still scared eating chocolate ? Not to me, I’ve never scared eating chocolate no matter what the effect, it’s just very fortunate chocolate has more good than the bad effects.

Enjoy your dark chocolate!

I know it sounds like a liquor drink with chocolate as the taste, but it isn’t (even though there might be a liquor tasted chocolate ,, humm.. hehe), it actually is the liquid form of dark chocolate.

It is the result of grounded chocolate nibs* into paste, it’s pure and can be sold as baking, bitter, or unsweetened chocolate. Or processed into other real chocolate products like chips, candy or enrobing chocolate (used for coating).

Unsweetened chocolate which through the same process, is essentially the same as that chocolate liquor, which is the base of all dark chocolates.
*please see on the other article titled: Pure dark chocolate ingredients

What’s dark chocolate made of ? simple, pure cocoa bean

But of course I wouldn’t just stop this article until there, hehe. That is the short explanation, the long one is like this:

The chocolate tree: Theobroma cacao, it produces pods containing cocoa beans not chocolate, then the beans is going through processes.
The first step is fermentation. It causes critical chemical changes in the beans needed to coax the chocolate flavor out. The beans have a unique flavor but don’t taste like chocolate, yet.

Then, they must be roasted, proper roasting brings out the flavor and aroma of the chocolate and reduces the bitterness. Precise time and temperature control are crucial to get the desired taste. Then their shells are ready to be removed from the beans.

So, the fermented, roasted & shell discarded of cocoa beans called: Cocoa nibs –> flesh of the bean. This tasteless pure chocolate smells cocoa beans are ready to be eaten to those who love the taste and is officially called “dark Chocolate”