Have you ever come across Couverture Chocolate and wondered what it means and what is it used for? Or perhaps you’re a pastry chef, executive chef, or a food business owner who wants to know a little bit more about what couverture chocolate is before using it? If you have these questions, then this blog post is for you. Throughout this article, we will cover what it is, its ingredients, taste profile, and how to use it.
What is Couverture Chocolate?
Couverture chocolate is a product predominantly made from cocoa butter and cocoa mass. You often see couverture products have a % in the product name. This represents the cocoa content inside the couverture chocolate product. The higher the percentage, the higher the cocoa content and the more intense the chocolate flavors and characteristics.
Couverture chocolate is often used in high-end baked products such as pastries, cakes, cookies, confectionery, truffles, etc. If you’d like to read more about couverture and compound chocolate, read our article “What’s the Difference Between Couverture and Compound Chocolate?”
How To use couverture chocolate
1. Tempering chocolate
If you are using couverture chocolate for bonbons, praline, chocolate bar, or as a coating/dipping application, it is recommended to temper your couverture chocolate. Tempering is the process of heating and cooling your chocolate before usage. This process helps to stabilize the chocolate for any confectionery or candy-making applications. It gives the chocolate a beautifully glossy and smooth finish while also making it more resistant to heat and humidity, thus prolonging its shelf life.
There are some cases where you do not require tempering. This depends on the application, such as when it's used as a filling inside baked goods and cakes or melting into a brownie or sauce.
What are the ingredients of couverture chocolate?
High-end couverture chocolate must have the same essential components: cocoa butter and cocoa mass. Other ingredients may include:
- Sugar
- Vanilla
- Emulsifier
- Milk powder (only if you’re making a milk chocolate product)
We sometimes get asked whether vegetable fat is part of the ingredients in high-end couverture chocolate, but this type of fat is commonly used in compound chocolate.
Read more: What Chocolate Melts the Fastest?
the taste profile of couverture chocolate
Different chocolate brands will have different tastes, performance, and mouthfeel characteristics. Like coffee, which has different aromas and flavors depending on where the coffee beans were grown and how they are roasted and fermented, the same applies to cocoa beans used to make couverture chocolate. It can have different profiles such as dried fruit, coffee, floral, woody, smoky, and nutty in terms of aroma.
For taste, we sometimes use words such as dried fruit, nutty, sweet, floral, cocoa, citrusy, bitter, and brown sugar to describe the taste profile of the chocolate.
When describing a chocolate product, mouthfeel profiles can be creamy, crunchy, smooth, crisp, gritty, or astringent.
If you are a high-end bakery, restaurant, confectionery, or cake shop that requires couverture chocolate, then be sure to download our product brochure.
Should you have any questions, leave us a comment on this blog, or should you wish to speak to one of our knowledgeable sales reps, visit our contact page.
