When I was young all chocolate used in baking was called “cooking chocolate”. It was different to eating chocolate in that it could be melted and would easily set leaving a glossy shine without involving too much skill. As time has moved on and the growth in available eating chocolate has increased more and more we are encouraged to use real chocolate in baking. The problem with this is that real chocolate becomes unstable when melted and on setting changes its glossy appearance to something which is dull and uneven.

What has happened is that the molecules have been thrown into turmoil and need skill and careful handling to bring the chocolate back to a glossy appearance. Cooking chocolate or what we now know as “chocolate flavoured coating” overcame this problem by extracting all of the cocoa butter and replacing it with vegetable fats which are much more stable. If you want to know how to use real chocolate in baking please see our blog entry entitled “How to melt real chocolate”

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 8:27 pm and is filed under News and Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.