at Tue, 12 Jul 2005 02:41:04 GMT in <1121136064.819926.291360
@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, wrote :

>Hi. I've been reading this group for two years, but this is my first
>post.
>
>I just wanted to drop in to say that Ghirardelli came out with a new
>version of its bittersweet "Double Chocolate" chips. It's now called
>"60% Cocoa Bittersweet Chocolate" chips. Now I've been a longtime fan
>of the "black bag" (thanks to Alex Rast's recommendation), so when I
>saw this at Sam's, into my cart it went! The bag says this new
>formulation is the company's "highest cocoa content chip." I sampled it
>and the increased cocoa butter definitely gives it a much smoother
>mouthfeel but with that same intense bittersweet chocolate taste I've
>come to expect.

I hope it's not exactly as you describe - or at least I hope that this
doesn't *replace* the Double Chocolate chips. Increased cocoa butter would
be *undesirable* for a chip because then it would have poor performance in
baking. Furthermore, if they've increased the cocoa butter content without
altering the cocoa solids percentage, this would mean that the net non-fat
cocoa solids (the part that gives chocolate its chocolatey flavour) would
have gone down, perhaps substantially. In turn this would mean the flavour
would be weaker. So you'd have literally the worst of all possible
alterations - a chip with weaker flavour and worse performance in baking.
The only reason I could conceive of for making such a modification would be
for the purposes of making it seem more appealing for straight eating out
of the bag, especially for those who value texture more than flavour. It
would be a pure marketing ploy rather than a valuable technical adjustment.

--
Alex Rast

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