Cooking Chocolate

[ItsNotOnlyTheGoodBits]

What is it?
How is it different to normal chocolate?
When a recipe calls for chocolate which do they mean?
When would you use cooking chocolate?
I've always used normal chocolate and know nothing.

I think cooking chocolate has more of the cocoa stuff in it and less sugar so Dairy Milk is out (oh dear, just have to eat it, shucks ). I use whatever I can find in our rather limited supermarket, with 70% or more cocoa solids. Otherwise, I use Bournville.

I suspect it doesn't matter that much depending upon what you're using it for. I use a square or two in bolognese, stews, chilli, that sort of stuff; but if it was for a pudding I wouldn't worry so much about what type it was.

It's also something to do with hwo the chocolate has been conched and tempered, and its setting qualities. Not really an issue for regular cooking, only for confectionary. But it's also always plain chocolate, not milk choc. As with many things, a tip to find decent chocolate is to look at the ingredients - good plain chocolate has very few ingredients, and cocoa mass is generally 65% or higher.

Great thanks.
I'm going to do a pud tomorrow and bought cooking choc for the first time. Don't know what I was thinking.

It seems that it should be fine to use though. It's Green & Black's so shouldn't go too wrong!

How did it turn out? What pud was it?