Baking

Question 1

What is chocolate made of?

Answer 1

Roasted cocoa beans

Question 2

Unsweetened chocolate

Answer 2

contains no sugar. The beans are crushed and ground, a process that generates heat and liquefies the fat or cocoa butter. The resulting liquid is called “chocolate liquor.” (There is no alcohol involved; in this case, “liquor” merely means “liquid.”) The liquor is poured into molds and allowed to solidify; the resulting bars are what is called unsweetened chocolate.

Question 3

Bittersweet Chocolate

Answer 3

By U.S. government standards, bittersweet chocolate must contain at least 35 percent chocolate liquor.

Bittersweet chocolate contains sugar, but generally not as much as semisweet chocolate, although, by government standards, they could contain practically identical amounts of chocolate liquor and sugar and still retain their bittersweet and semisweet labels. What this means is that one brand’s bittersweet chocolate could be close in sweetness to another brand’s semisweet chocolate, and vice versa.

Question 4

Semisweet Chocolate

Answer 4

Semisweet can contain between 15 and 35 percent chocolate liquor.