Couverture Chocolate Tidbits
Chocolates are always alluring and they are such a pain to resist. How much more if they’re made out of even higher amounts of cocoa butter than the usual one? You love the mouth-feel of chocolate melting on the tongue, don’t you? Imagine that being intensified. Yes, that.
Couverture chocolate is an extraordinary type of high-quality chocolate being used by chocolate companies and chocolate makers. It offers an even richer and creamier consistency than regular chocolate because more cocoa butter is put in. After proper tempering, you come up with a more polished and glossier chocolate with a crisper “snap” when broken. It’s ideally used for coating, molding, garnishing and dipping.
Not more than 100 companies worldwide produce couverture chocolate. Some of these companies produce only for their own private usage, while others sell their products to other chocolatiers who don’t have the capacity to make their own.
Couverture chocolate outshines the ordinary chocolate with its exceptional characteristics.
Among those is the quality. Couverture chocolate makers’ sources are the chocolate scouts who go around the world to find the best cacao beans, and careful study is being done for them to achieve the perfect bean blend for that exceptionally distinct flavor profile.
To be called as couverture, the chocolate must hold 32 to 39% of cocoa butter and the total percentage of the cocoa butter and the cocoa solids should be at least 54%.
Couverture chocolate is way too different from confectionery chocolate or compound chocolate sine these products have a much lesser amount of cocoa butter. More to these, some of them even contain vegetable/coconut/palm oil, hydrogenated fats, as well as artificial chocolate flavoring.
Couverture chocolate is suggested not to be mixed in with any other ingredients because of its high price and quality. It is built to stand out alone as an ingredient. It is ideal for chocolate fountains since the cocoa butter acts as a lubricant to avoid clumping of the chocolate and getting stickier than what is ideal.
If you want to give it a try, you can get samples from the makers to get the flavor profile you personally like since couverture chocolates have different tastes depending on where the beans came from and the process they undergo.
Find More Learn About Chocolate Articles
Categories: chocolate articles Tags: Cacao Butter, chocolate education, chocolate tasting, learn about chocolate, special
Chocolate and Chemistry
Chocolate is out-and-out delectable and nearly every one of us aren’t precisely aware of the cause why we just can’t defy its appeal. But not the ones who create them, they practically are acquainted with why we find chocolate tempting and it all boils down to chemistry.
Chocolate may be sweet and all that but the main reason behind its unexplainable allure is the fat, according to Professor Dolores O’Riordan of University College Dublin who is based in the Institute of Food and Health. In a speech during the Science week named Smart Chemistry – Tasty Food!, she said “The melting of the fat is very important,”
According to Professor O’Riordan, cocoa butter is the most important fat in chocolate, something the chocolatier has to do some chemistry on. In the said presentation, the audience was comprised of students. Much to their delight, they were given some samples of chocolate and chanced upon some taste test
The size of “fat crystal” shaped during construction was of the essence. Every chocolate has diverse melting points, but what these chocolate makers are usually looking for is one that melts in the mouth. A large fat crystal which melts in the mouth at 33.8 degrees is the best bet.
“Essentially the food we eat is made of chemicals. We process the chemicals within the food to make them safe, to give them texture, to make them look and taste nice,” Prof O’Riordan told her audience.
Chemistry is useful in changing the aroma, color, texture, “and that all affects the food choices we make”, she added. And according to her, contrary to popular belief, additives, preservatives and artificial colors aren’t so bad. She claims that they were basically safe. Interesting enough, the love of chocolate can be passed down to your offspring as Prof O’Riordan said “Genes can also influence our preferences for food,”
There certainly is a selection of food that people are adoring, and chocolate is almost always in our list. Blame it on Chemistry.
Categories: chocolate articles Tags: CHEMISTRY, chocolate facts, learn about chocolate, Science
Chocolate As Comfort Food
We all go through tough times, we get sick, we get sad and all that. And usually, at those moments in our lives, we tend to look for comfort. Comfort food always comes in handy. They just magically make us feel all the better. What is it with these foods, really? Why do they bring such magic?
Chocolates are known to be the universal comfort food. And chocolate’s reputation as a mood-lifter makes it a frequent and cherished gift, especially to people who are particularly rolling with the punches. It gives a lift to their spirits that most of us can relate to.
The term “comfort food”, which was added to the Webster’s Dictionary in 1972, is defined as “food that gives a sense of emotional well-being,” or “any food or drink that one turns to for temporary relief, security or reward.”
Research shows that when we eat chocolate, the brain elicits feel-good hormones into the body to make up for the bad vibes that overwhelm us in our everyday life like stress and fatigue. These particular hormones are also released when we feel happy such as when we hug someone. Interesting, I know.
One’s comfort food is another’s dieting archenemy. We all know how figure-conscious people muster everything they can just to avoid a bar of chocolate. Just so you know, completely depriving yourself of the things you love will just cause you to yearn for them even more intensely. The trick to this is to not totally rid yourself of them, but just have them in moderation.
People who are very uptight with what they eat often crumble down when they just can’t take it anymore, and the result? They go overboard with eating what they have been craving. So not ideal. So yes, it still boils down to having the things you want in moderation.
These comfort foods don’t essentially have reasons why they give us comfort and boost our moods, but they do make our lives a little better and get us back to our sense of self.
Categories: chocolate articles Tags: chocolate education, chocolate lovers, Craving, Diet, learn about chocolate, stress reduction
Chocolate in China
Staff at World Chocolate Wonderland in China have assembled a replica of the Great Wall of China and created terracotta warriors all out chocolate. This is an effort to help popularize chocolate in China.
Here’s the whole article, complete with video:
http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_life/2010-01-15/988202349855.html
The World Chocolate Wonderland display opens to the public at the end of January.
Categories: chocolate articles, chocolate in the news Tags: learn about chocolate, world chocolate
From the Bean to the Bar
There is much more to making fine chocolate than picking a cacao bean and cooking it. Going from tree to chocolate bar takes a special touch to achieve the perfection you’re looking for.
Bean selection is the first step in making chocolate. If the bean chosen isn’t of high quality, the end result will be a less than desirable chocolate. Therefore, many fine chocolate makers take time to personally select the best beans.
Once a chocolatier selects the beans they are roasted. The roasting process has a great impact on the finished flavor. After roasting, the beans are put into a grinding process. The pulverized mass is called chocolate liquor and is turned into the actual chocolate.
To create the final chocolate bar from chocolate liquor, sugar and other ingredients are added to the liquor. Then another grinding process called refining is begun. Refining crushes everything and helps ensure that that the chocolate bar doesn’t have a grainy feeling in your mouth. Following the refining process, the mix is cooked and stirred in a process called conching. This step can take place over a few hours or days. It is at this point that chocolate begins to take on the flavor that most chocoholics love.
After conching, cocoa butter can be added to change the flow. Then the chocolate can be put into its final form, liquid or solid. If the final product is in solid form it must be tempered. Then it is packaged and shipped. If it took the form of a chocolate bar, now it’s finally ready for you to purchase and eat. Yum.
For a fun and tasty chocolate education visit Chocolate University Online.
