Are You Baking With the Right Chocolate?
Do you know your bittersweet from your semisweet from your dark from your milk from your…? The world of baking chocolate is confusing. Here's how to navigate it.
By Rochelle Bilow
The baking aisle of your supermarket is a complicated place, stacked high with questions and more varieties of funfetti cake than you ever know you needed. If you're just there for some baking chocolate, you face shelves of options: Bittersweet or semisweet? Milk or dark? How dark? Chips or bars? Bars or blocks? Nibs?!? It's enough to throw your hands up, grab a tub of frosting, one of those boxed mixes, and call it a day.
We present: the complete guide to buying and baking with chocolate.
Bars, Blocks, Chips, Wafers, or Powder?
You should never bake with chocolate you wouldn't eat out-of-hand. "I wouldn't bake with an $11 artisanal bar," says senior associate editor Claire Saffitz. On the other hand, "it should be delicious enough on its own to eat as a snack." Back in the baking aisle, there are five main formats of baking chocolate: bars, blocks, wafers, chips, and cocoa powder.
Chopped chocolate bars are perfect for gooey cookies. Photo: Alex Lau
For cookies, puddings, cakes, hot chocolate, and more.
Bars are the most versatile and commonly found form of baking chocolate. They can be easily chopped into smaller pieces for melting or folding into cookie dough. Saffitz likes Guittard, Callebaut, and Valrhona brands.
For those who do a lot of baking, bars are your best bet. Photo: Valrhona
Valhrona
For large-format baking
Doing a lot of baking? Like, a you-own-a-bakery amount of baking? Chocolate is also sold in larger quantity blocks. While the average baker probably doesn't have much need for 2.2-pound hunks of dark chocolate, they're great for big projects. Because they're more difficult to chop than bars, Saffitz recommends using a serrated knife to shave off shards from the edge. These shards can be melted, or blitzed in a food processor for smaller pieces.
Chocolate wafers are thin and small, meaning they melt quickly. Photo: sahadis.com
sahadis.com
For ganaches, glazes, puddings, and frostings—anything that requires melted chocolate
Chocolate wafers are small, disc-shaped pieces of chocolate. They don't contain stabilizers, which makes them preferable to chips. They also happen to be a perfect solution for "I need chocolate, now" emergencies—or so we've heard. They're frequently available in bittersweet, semisweet, milk, and white varieties.
Sometimes, you just need a chocolate chip cookie. Photo: Tara Donne
Tara Donne
For cookies, breads, midnight snacking...
Contrary to the Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies you may have grown up with (and still love!), Saffitz does not recommend baking with conventional chocolate chips. Consider a just-out-of-the-oven cookie made with chips. The chips are soft and shiny, but still maintain their perfect chip shape. That's thanks to stabilizers and preservatives. Although there's (probably) no harm in eating them, stabilizers compromise the flavor of the chocolate and give it a waxy texture. If you are going to buy chips, spring for the high quality brands that are made with minimal ingredients (the only stabilizer Guittard brand contains, for example, is sunflower lecithin).
Cake-like brownies get their texture from cocoa powder. Photo: Tom Schierlitz
Tom Schierlitz
For cakes, brownies, milkshakes, garnish, and more
Cocoa powder should be unsweetened. If it's not, it's hot chocolate mix. Its flour-like texture makes it best for cake-like treats and brownies. It can also be used instead of flour to coat pans before adding batter. You have two choices when buying cocoa powder: "Natural," which really just means regular or basic, and "Dutch process." Unless a recipe specifically calls for Dutch process cocoa powder, do not use it. Dutch process is treated with alkaline to reduce the acidity level (the process also turns the powder a stunningly black-as-night color). The lower acidity level means that it will react with the other ingredients, like eggs, differently than natural cocoa powder. That means crumbly cakes, puddings that just won't set, and chalky cookies. However, if you are planning on using the cocoa powder as a garnish that won't be baked—such as a coating for truffles—either option will work.
Pick Your Percentage
While some chocolate varieties are interchangeable in recipes, we have a few favorite applications for each.
Bittersweet chocolate chunks get folded into these cookies. There's also cocoa powder in the dough. Photo:
Peden & Munk
Bittersweet chocolate hovers in the 70% cacao range, and can be used interchangeably with semisweet. Anywhere you'd use one, you can use the other (and, to be honest, most of us don't have refined-enough palates to taste the difference in a dessert). Your best bet for bittersweet and semisweet chocolate is a recipe where the chocolate is really the star player, like a decadent pie or simple buttercream frosting.
Use bittersweet or semisweet chocolate in this gluten-free cake. Photo: Linda Xiao
Linda Xiao
Semisweet
Semisweet chocolate has a cacao content of around 60%, and can be used interchangeably with bittersweet chocolate. It's frequently found in the form of baking chips, but we prefer buying it in bar or block form. It's a great all-purpose option to have on hand, as it plays well with other ingredients.
Chocolate truffles are rolled in unsweetened cocoa powder. Photo: Alex Lau
Alex Lau
Unsweetened
Unsweetened wafer, bar, or block chocolate is very dark and bitter, and crumbly in texture. It's best for melting into other ingredients like butter and cream, because the consistency of the chocolate is chalky, without the smooth richness of bittersweet or semisweet. It should be used in recipes where there's a sweetener already present, like these brownies, which also contain bittersweet chocolate and a full cup of sugar. Remember that cocoa powder is also unsweetened, and can be used as a finishing touch, as in truffles.
This simple chocolate cake is party-ready thanks to a hit of milk chocolate. Photo: Alex Lau
Milk chocolate is sweeter and less bitter than dark chocolate, and has a higher amount of milk solids and sugar. Instead of adding milk chocolate to a sugary batter, let it be the sweeter for recipes like like pancakes and muffins.
We don't call it "Darkest Chocolate Cake" for nothing. Photo: Tuukka Koski
Tuukka Koski
Dark is for true chocolate aficionados. With a cacao content in the 70% and above range, it walks a tight line between bitter and almost too bitter. (That said, to confuse the matter bittersweet and semisweet are sometimes referred to as "dark.") Highlight the complex flavors of the cacao by letting it be the star of the recipe. Although dark chocolate can benefit from a little sweetness, too much will muddy your palate. Pudding, mousse, ganache, and glaze are all great candidates for dark chocolate.
Marbled Mint-Chocolate Pudding combined dark and white chocolate. Photo: Michael Graydon + Nikole Herriott
Michael Graydon + Nikole Herriott
There's no cacao in white chocolate—it's just cocoa butter and sugar. While it can be a polarizing flavor (it's very sweet), it can be truly great when combined with nuts and a good amount of salt—think white chocolate macadamia cookies. Saffitz also likes caramelizing white chocolate to give it a nutty, toasted flavor.
How to Store the Goods
No matter which one you choose—and we'll help you decide that soon—chocolate should be kept in a cool place, like a cabinet away from the stovetop and oven. There's no need to keep it in the fridge or freezer if it's wrapped well. If using just a portion of the chocolate, re-wrap it with the original packaging and add a taut layer of plastic wrap. Chocolate will "bloom" (exhibit lighter colored spots on the surface) if exposed to moisture, so avoid dampness. If your chocolate does bloom, it's still edible. The blemish is just cosmetic, but should be avoided for chocolate that's not going to be melted (as in the case of, say, chocolate chunk cookies).
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