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Chocolate
Also called dark chocolate, cocoa, cooking chocolate
Cacao mass mixed with sugar and, usually, cocoa butter, moulded into a bar you can melt. This is not unsweetened cocoa powder, which has had most of the fat pressed out. Dark for coating and mole; milk if that is the bar you have — sweeter and softer.
Origin
Cacao was a Mesoamerican drink; the eating bar is a nineteenth-century European factory product. Couverture melts better than cheap baking chocolate, which is often short of cocoa butter.
Flavour
Bitter-sweet, roasted, sometimes fruity. Cheap bars taste waxy. Water on melted chocolate seizes it into a grainy paste.
How it is made
Fermented beans are roasted, ground to a liquor, then mixed with sugar and extra cocoa butter. Cocoa powder is the defatted cake from the same liquor — not an interchangeable weight.
How to use it
Chop and melt over a barely simmering bath or in short microwave bursts. A drop of water ruins a coating; warm cream can sometimes rescue a seize. Dip churros or lamingtons when the chocolate is fluid, not hot. Mole wants a little dark chocolate for body, not a dessert sauce. Keep it away from a rolling boil.
Storage
Cool, dry, dark — not the fridge if you can help it. Cold blooms the fat grey (edible, uglier). Wrap tightly so it does not pick up onion.
Recipes using it
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