Types of chocolate

Types of chocolate

Fine chocolate falls into three categories: dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate, Williams said.

• Dark chocolate has chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, lecithin, sugar and vanilla.
• Milk chocolate has all of the above plus milk fats and milk solids.
• White chocolate contains everything milk chocolate does except chocolate liquor.

Chocolatiers debate whether white chocolate is really chocolate. Until 2002, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considered it a confectionary rather than chocolate because it does not contain chocolate liquor. The Hershey Food Corp. and the Chocolate Manufacturers Association petitioned the FDA, which added a standard of identity for white chocolate. Because the FDA refers to it as white chocolate, rather than confectionary, some experts, like Williams, accept white chocolate as chocolate.

Within the three categories, the FDA also acknowledges several grades, Williams said. They include unsweetened or brute, which can be up to 99 percent chocolate liquor; bittersweet; semisweet; and dark milk chocolate. The type of chocolate depends on what ingredients are present and the percentage of cocoa, in addition to where the beans are from and the way they are prepared.