Milk &
white
The categories people underrate. Done seriously, both are craft objects; done cheaply, they’re sugar delivery.
The four types
Click each to see what it is — and isn’t:
How milk chocolate is built
Traditional milk
- Low cacao (often ~30%), high sugar
- Milk crumb or powder; cooked, caramel notes
- Sweet, comforting, origin muted
- The mass-market default
Craft "dark-milk"
- Higher cacao (40–65%)
- Real origin flavour under the dairy
- Balances creaminess with cocoa complexity
- The category’s renaissance
Don’t dismiss milk and white as beginner chocolate. A 55% dark-milk or a vanilla-forward craft white can out-nuance a mediocre dark. The question is always: is there real cocoa-butter quality and flavour here, or just sugar?
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- What is white chocolate made of?
- What does the craft-milk movement change?
- What is ruby chocolate?
- Where does origin show most, and why?
- How does milk differ from white in composition?
Inclusions &
confections
Everything beyond the plain bar — judged by one rule: does the addition complete the chocolate, or hide it?
Inclusions & the balance rule
The best inclusion bars still taste of chocolate first. Click each:
A taster’s tour of confections
You don’t need to make these to appreciate them — but you should recognise them:
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- What single inclusion most reliably lifts a bar?
- State the balance principle in one sentence.
- What is gianduja?
- What is a ganache?
- Why is "praline" a confusing word?
Faults &
quality
Knowing what’s wrong is half of knowing what’s good. Learn the defects, then the framework that gates a score.
The fault library
Two are texture faults (bloom); the rest are flavour defects, mostly from processing. Click each:
The quality framework
Once a bar is clean, judge it on four axes — but cleanliness is the gate that comes first:
Keep chocolate cool (16–18°C), dry, dark, and sealed, away from strong odours (it absorbs them). Never the fridge: condensation causes sugar bloom and the chocolate picks up food smells.
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- Distinguish fat bloom from sugar bloom.
- Name two flavour faults and their causes.
- Why is smoky-from-drying a fault but dark roast a style?
- What role does cleanliness play in scoring?
- How should chocolate be stored, and why not the fridge?