How to shop for chocolate like a cheapskate

Dear Tricia, When making chocolate cakes, what do you think gives you the most chocolate taste: melted chocolate chips, baking chocolate or powdered cocoa?  You know, the most bang for your buck?

Awesome question, with kind of a definite answer, and kind of not.  Let me back up for a moment and explain the difference between the 3 chocolates in question.

Chocolate chips are almost always semi sweet or bitter sweet.  Sweet is the operative word here: it means that sugar has been added.  Any time sugar has been added to chocolate, there is less cacao (not to be confused with cocoa- sorry all you Dyslexics), and cacao is what gives you that chocolate-y taste.

Unsweetened baker's chocolate is 100% cacao.  (Side note, remember what we all did as kids?  You mom would be using it in a recipe and you would insist on trying it, even though she warned you that you wouldn't like it.  And you'd try it anyways and be so surprised that it was awful?  Ok, back to chocolate now.)  By itself, bakers chocolate it gross, but once you add it to a recipe with lovely fat and delicious sugar, it gives you great chocolate flavor.

Cocoa powder, simply put, is roasted cocoa beans that have 75%-90% of the cocoa butter removed (cocoa butter is what gives chocolate that melty, buttery feel in your mouth), and then pressed and ground into powder.  It also gives you great chocolate flavor.  Some, but not all cocoa powders are 100% cacao.

The first thing I have to address is that the recipe used is a huge variable here.  A recipe made with a lot of egg whites is going to give you a lighter tasting chocolate cake than one with butter and sugar and loads of cocoa powder.  Knowing that, lets talk bang for your buck.  I'm always up for a bargain.  (Picture me shopping at Fiesta yesterday for produce- 20 limes for a dollar?  Hell yes.)  To try and be as accurate as possible, I have taken prices of chocolate from my local Fiesta Super Mercado (in Dallas, home of our national champions, The Dallas Mavericks, thankyouverymuch) and averaged them out with prices from a supermarket outside of Chicago and prices on Amazon.com.  I do not recommend purchasing your chocolate off Amazon.com, by the way.  Its kind of overpriced.  Stick to Fiesta.  Plus, all those limes....

On the back of any box of Hershey's cocoa powder, there is a conversion chart for using cocoa powder instead of bakers chocolate or semi sweet chocolate chips.  Since I'm only on my first cup of coffee, I'm going to use their chart as an example to tell you which gives you the best deal.

Let's pretend you're using a recipe that calls for 2 ounces of bakers chocolate.   If an 8 oz box of bakers chocolate costs $6.84, then each 1 oz square costs about 86 cents.  That means you're using about $1.72 worth of chocolate for your recipe. 

Your average 8 oz can of cocoa powder costs $3.59.  It takes 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder to equal 1 ounces of bakers chocolate.  So for this recipe, if you substitute cocoa powder instead of baker's chocolate, you'll use 6 tablespoons of cocoa powder.  If there are about 45 tablespoons of cocoa powder in a can, that means each tablespoon costs about 8 cents.  So 6 tablespoons equals about 48 cents worth of cocoa powder.   (Are you listening, Mrs. Bilbrey?  I was paying attention in fifth grade math.)

Now let's talk chocolate chips.  Those guys, semi or bittersweet, have sugar in them- completely different than our sugar-free friends we just priced out.  If you use them in place of baker's chocolate, you want to make sure you take out about 3 tablespoons of sugar for every ounce you use.  Just a head's up.  But for consistency, let's price it too.  Chocolate chips weigh the same as baker's chocolate, they're just in little delicious kiss shapes.  The average price of a 12 ounce bag of chocolate chips is $3.36.  That means every ounce is about 28 cents.  This means your recipe will use about 56 cents of chocolate. 

It looks like cocoa powder is going to win here, but if you want to get really technical, chocolate chips and cocoa powder are actually going to come in pretty damn close because when you use the chocolate chips you have to take out some of the sugar.  Less sugar means less money, and every bit counts.  If you take the sugar variable out of the equation, cocoa powder is going to be your cheapest bet.
 
And here's a helpful hint- anytime you use chocolate in a recipe,  add a little bit of fresh-brewed coffee. It brings out the chocolate flavor and you'll never taste the coffee.  What else have we learned here?  That I has friends all over the country who can give her a heads up on regional chocolate prices, I totally love a bargain, and I'm a secret math genius.  I also clip coupons.  You heard it here first. 

Dark, Milk, and White: Three Chocolate Races Divided

Dear Tricia, How is white chocolate different than dark and milk chocolate? And why does it seize faster than dark and milk chocolate?

Chocolate is one of those awesome things that people either absolutely love, or absolutely get sick from. I LOVE things like that- nothing says awesome more than being able to only spark a love/hate relationship with someone.
Let's start by talking about what exactly makes up chocolate, aside from magic, which no one lists on the ingredient list but I'm pretty sure its in there. The actual taste of chocolate comes from the cocoa liquor. Don't get your hopes up... there's no booze in it. And on its own, it doesn't taste great: its like chocolate with no sugar in it, and no melt-in-your-mouth feel. But without the cocoa liquor, chocolate wouldn't taste like chocolate. The second ingredient that makes up chocolate is the cocoa butter, which is what gives it its smooth, melty texture. So cocoa liquor (you'll also hear people refer to it as "cocoa solids"), cocoa butter, and the addition of sugar is what makes up dark, or bittersweet chocolate.
What's added to dark chocolate to turn it into milk chocolate is.... da da da dum... MILK. You hear that, vegans? Milk chocolate is yet another thing you're depriving yourself of, you crazies! Milk powder can also be used, and vanilla is often an added flavor.
White chocolate isn't actually chocolate at all: its a confection with a big fat liar of a name. White chocolate is made of cocoa butter, milk, sugar, and vanilla. The cocoa liquor is missing, which is what keeps it out of the "chocolate" category. Sorry, whitey.
So lets break this down:
Dark chocolate- cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, sugar
Milk chocolate- cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, sugar, milk, vanilla
White chocolate- cocoa butter, sugar, milk, vanilla

Moving on to your next question: why does white chocolate seize faster? First let me explain to the non-experts what seizing means. When you melt chocolate and add water to it, it turns into a gloppy, thick mess that is impossible to melt again. That's called "seizing." Water and chocolate are mortal enemies- they're like the Denver Broncos and Oakland Raiders of the chocolate world. When you start adding extra ingredients to dark chocolate, (like sugar, milk, and vanilla), it makes the chocolate less stable, which is a nice way of saying it gets fussy and temperamental. So, if you've got a bowl of dark chocolate melting over a pot of simmering water, some of the condensation from the bowl might get into the chocolate and it could be fine. But if any moisture at all gets into a bowl of melting white or milk chocolate, it will seize up immediately. And that's just because it has all the extra added ingredients that make it less stable.
If you ruin a batch of white or milk chocolate that has seized up, luckily you don't have throw it out. That would be stupid and financially irresponsible, and people, we're in a recession! Just add lots of hot milk, stir it up, and voila: hot chocolate. Keep it in the fridge for when you get your late night chocolate craving. (I don't get those cravings... mine are usually for white wine spritzers.)
When you're trying to figure out what kind of chocolate you want to buy, good chocolate will usually have the cocoa liquor content on the label. A higher number means it has more cocoa liquor, and thus, less sugar. So if you're a bigger fan of sweet chocolate and are comparing two labels that say 56% and 70%, go for the one that says 56%.
If you've heard any of the hype about dark chocolate being good for you, yes, it is indeed true. Dark chocolate contains polyphenols- the antioxidants that keep things like cancer and premature aging away. So if you're going to try to eat chocolate for the health benefits, make sure its not milk or white. The higher the cocoa liquor content, the higher the level of polyphenols. I like to think that for every bite of chocolate I eat, it erases one of the martinis I've consumed in my lifetime. I should take stock in Hershey's....