Tasting the Chocolate Rainbow

Chocolate had simple beginnings. All it took was grinding up cacao beans and mixing it with spices. Viola! The Mayans were the first to record a recipe that would end up circulating the world for centuries to come. From its humble origins in the fields of Central America, chocolate has taken on a few new variations and some incredible new colors.

Depending on who you talk to, there are between 3 to 7 types of chocolate. Don’t confuse that with varieties (which you can check out a little more information here). When we talk about “types” we mean the different forms that chocolate takes on. In this case, we will stick with four: dark, milk, white, and ruby.

Dark Chocolate

Dark chocolate is composed of cacao paste (or chocolate liquor), cacao butter, and a sweetener. Depending on where you get this, you may also see vanilla or lecithin on the nutrition label.  If you see either of these on the label, just pass on it. Good dark chocolate doesn’t need these add-ons.

What makes dark chocolate unique is that it comes in percentages. A 70% dark chocolate is essentially saying that the product is that percentage of cacao paste to the other ingredients. The lower the percentage, the sweeter the chocolate. The higher the percentage, the more bitter the chocolate may be.

The sweet thing about dark chocolate is that it maintains more nutritional value than the other types, like milk or white. The reason being is because of the greater presence of cacao which is packed with minerals and vitamins. It is why you may see people grab some cacao nibs and put them in their favorite smoothie.

It is worth mentioning that cacao powder and baking chocolate are a precursor to dark chocolate. That may be a bit of a progressive statement, since it is easy to assume that both are their own types. Cacao powder is pulverized, and partially deflated cacao paste. Since it isn’t sweetened, it is often used to make great chocolate cakes or other desserts alongside baking chocolate (or ground up cacao beans and packaged as a bar).

Then we can get into an interesting debate about raw chocolate. Raw chocolate is dark chocolate, but it is processed in such a way that doesn’t reach a temperature that causes it to lose any of its nutritional value. It now has a reputation of being a “superfood.”

Milk Chocolate

Making its way onto the chocolate stage in 1875, a Swiss business name named Daniel Peter was the first person to successfully combine cacao paste with cacao butter, sugar, and condensed milk. Since then, the Swiss have dominated the milk chocolate industry and produced the famous household name- Nestle (after Henri Nestle, a good friend and neighbor to Daniel Peter).

Milk chocolate is a combination of either condensed milk or dry milk solid. The secret recipes from our European manufacturers favor the use of condensed milk while dry milk solids are more popular in the United States. Typically, 12% of milk chocolate is made up of some kind of milk. It is much sweeter than dark chocolate, is lighter in color, and is very difficult to cook with because of its propensity to overheat.

How milk chocolate became popular today is probably because of the assembly-line production ingenuity Milton Hershey. Who hasn’t ever had a Hershey bar? He made his first milk chocolate bar in 1900 and started a chocolate revolution that swept up Frank and Forrest Mars to give us the staples of Milky Way and M&Ms. Milk chocolate is palatable for the everyday consumer.

White Chocolate

Is it chocolate? It depends on how it is defined. If chocolate is required to have cacao solids, then white chocolate is not chocolate. However, white chocolate makes into the top three types of chocolate every time. We, at least, need to talk about it.

White chocolate is composed of sugar, milk, and cacao butter. Nestle is credited with making the first white chocolate bar and it wasn’t until 1946 that it was introduced to the United States. From there it has grown in popularity being used as candy coating (since is easily meltable) and in various kinds of chocolate bars. It contains the highest amount of milk solids of any type of chocolate.

Caramelized white chocolate, also worth mentioning, is “roasted” white chocolate. Not necessarily a different type of chocolate but is produced white chocolate is heated at a low temperature to caramelize the sugar and milk proteins. It has a totally different flavor profile than traditional white chocolate, with a nuttiness and a richness that is unique. Imagine butterscotch, just a bit more upscale.

Ruby Chocolate

And now to Ruby, the youngest type of chocolate. Created in 2017 by Belgian chocolate makers, Callebaut, it gets its name because of the reddish-pink color. What makes this type of chocolate so interesting is because it is not artificial coloring that makes it pink. According to Callebaut, there were able to discover a new cacao bean found in areas of Brazil, Ecuador, and the Ivory Coast. This makes Ruby real chocolate.

But we need look a little deeper at the way that Ruby chocolate is made. Just like raw chocolate, the process is everything. Raw chocolate is the product of the fermentation process and ruby is no different. Cacao itself is naturally pink, so at just the right point in the harvesting process, the unfermented cacao beans have been treated with acids to maintain that vivid color. Any variety of cacao can be used but is treated with a little extra care.

Having been on the market for just a few years, ruby chocolate seems a bit like white chocolate in its application. It is a fun pop of color to chocolate desserts or can be used as a candy coating. Its flavor is a mixture of tart and sweet. It has the smoothness of white chocolate with the fruity and sometime sour taste of dark chocolate.

So, it may be time to taste the chocolate rainbow.