How To Read Chocolate Ingredients
Welcome back to my blog series on learning to read chocolate wrappers. This is the second article in the series, so make sure you read the first article about what is means when you see a % on your wrapper. Today I’m writing about ingredients.
Let’s clear up the confusion about ingredients by starting with two words: “cocoa” and “cacao”. When it comes to reading your chocolate labels, “cocoa” and “cacao” are interchangeable words. Cocoa is not just a drink or a powder (unless specifically labeled so) but it’s merely the English word for “cacao”. Cocoa beans and Cacao beans are the same thing, they are the beans found in white pulp inside a cacao pod. When you are reading chocolate wrappers, there is no need to be hung up on cocoa vs cacao, but there are different ways of labeling the cocoa content in a bar. I’m going to stick with using “cocoa” for this article for fluidity.
Cocoa ingredients you can find on a wrapper include: cocoa beans, cocoa liquor, cocoa mass, and cocoa butter. These are either the full cocoa bean itself or derived from it, so they are all included in the % of the bar, which you have already learned about. Following are the differences.
Cocoa Beans- The beans that chocolate are made from. They are harvested, dried, and fermented before they are roasted and refined into chocolate. Chocolate makers typically purchase the already dried and fermented beans, then they roast and refine them in their own shops.
Cocoa Liquor- Cocoa beans that are ready to be refined, usually ground down anywhere from a fine ground up “nib” to a partial liquid state. While most makers who call themselves “bean-to-bar” get to this stage themselves by roasting and grinding, it is possible to purchase cocoa liquor that is ready to be refined into chocolate.
Cocoa Mass- I have seen this used interchangeably with cocoa liquor and cocoa beans.
Cocoa Butter- Cocoa butter is naturally found in cocoa beans. The natural amount in the bean is included under the labeling of cocoa beans, cocoa liquor, and cocoa mass, but when there is extra cocoa butter added, then it is properly labeled as an ingredient. The amount of cocoa butter added can vary from just a small amount, less than 1%, to a larger quantity. It is mostly added for tempering or texture purposes.
More ingredients you might find on a bar are: sweeteners, emulsifiers, flavorings, inclusions, dairy, and the dreaded “other”.
Sweeteners- Acceptable sweeteners are labeled as sugar, cane sugar, organic sugar, coconut sugar, or maple sugar. Try to avoid artificial sweeteners in chocolate.
Emulsifiers- Lecithin is sometimes added to chocolate as an emulsifier. I have seen soy lecithin, non-gmo soy lecithin, and sunflower lecithin added to chocolate. Most of these fall under the “less than 1%” category meaning there is less than 1% of lecithin found in a bar.
Flavorings- The most common flavoring in chocolate is vanilla. Pure vanilla bean, or vanilla bean extract. Watch out for “vanillin” or any synthetic flavorings, they taste synthetic!
Inclusions- An inclusion bar is a bar with added ingredients such as sea salt, dried fruits, nuts, tea, flowers, etc.
Dairy- A milk chocolate bar has some sort of milk or milk alternative added. Most times you will see it labeled as milk powder, but you will sometimes see goat milk powder, or coconut milk added to bars. Watch out for grocery store “dark chocolate” bars that may have dairy added.
Other- There are several ingredients found in low quality “chocolate” such as alternative fats (anything besides cocoa butter), alternative sugars like corn syrup, synthetic flavorings, and other types of “filler” ingredients. These are not good ingredients to see on your chocolate wrapper. Remember, not all chocolate is made equal!
There is a movement, primarily in America, for “two ingredient chocolate” - cocoa beans and sugar. Some of these bars are very well made and on the top of my favorites list, however, I never exclude a bar because it has a third or fourth “acceptable” ingredient. I consider acceptable ingredients to be anything I have listed besides what is in the “other” category. I have had many excellent bars with added cocoa butter and vanilla. I’ve also had bars I did not care for with just cocoa beans and sugar. It comes down to not only the ingredients, but their quality and most importantly the skill of the chocolate maker. Go out and read your labels!
This writing on this blog is my opinion only. I did not get paid for writing this article or featuring any specific bars.
