Quick question about melting chocolate

Just to explain a bit about different chocolate products: You'll run into most likely three different types of product. Chocolate product, chocolate with other added fats, and 100% chocolate. The first is usually called coating chocolate, non temper chocolate, candy chocolate, or chocolaty chips. This is categorized by having little to no cocoa butter and uses other fats. It uses other hydrogenated fat sources that do not require tempering to harden. Examples of this type of fats are butter, palm oil, coconut oil, and hydrogenated soybean oil.That chocolate is good if you want something extremely easy to use without risking melting or something going wrong. I find nothing wrong with it, it is extremely easy to use and a lot of people enjoy the taste. Generally it is the cheaper chips that you'll run into this. You get what you pay for. These chips are able to be cheaper because cocoa butter is an expensive fat versus palm oil, saturated fruit/vegetable oils, or clarified butter. A lot of people essentially make their own coating chocolate when they add butter or other solid fats to their melted chocolate.

The second category you'll run into is a middle ground where some chocolate chips will have some added fat other than cocoa butter in it. In the U.S. generally ingredients are in order of most to least. This is what you need to be careful to look for when looking at chocolate chips. It is not labeled easily and you really need to look at the ingredients to tell. My guess is this is to help mouthfeel and hardening after baking(baking puts the chocolate chips out of temper) along with help control costs. It really doesn't affect much in terms of tempering or flavor, but I just wanted to point it out in case you want chips that are true 100% chocolate. There is even a candy you can make called meltaways that uses the unique properties of adding a tropical fat to cocoa butter to make something really good(this is what Lindt truffle filling is).

The third category are 100% chocolate chips with nothing added beyond the standards. It is in this category you are getting chocolate in just different shapes so it doesn't matter what you buy. There is different price, quality, and flavor profiles as with chocolate in general. However that is all arguably preference. You are still going to be getting chocolate that can be tempered and handled as expected.

Just wanted to explain why chocolate chips might not be what you hoped for versus what you usually get with bulk chocolate.


TL;DR Just wanted to backup chocolate chips are fine. Any chocolate is fine to use as accents or in a recipe. As long as the ingredients in the back list cocoa butter as the main fat source(excluding milkfat/milk products for milk chocolate) it is good chocolate and can be tempered as expected. For recipes like cakes truthfully it doesn't matter much as long as you like the taste of the product you are using.

/r/Baking Thread