In Praise Of Chocolate Chips

  Chocolate chips rule as much as baking snobs hate to admit it. These tiny little morsels shouldn't be discounted. Their tininess can add a big impact and flavor to any dessert recipe.

Regular contributor Genevieve Ko knows this and wrote about the tasty nibbles in yesterday's New York Times Food section.It's partly for nostalgia's sake. How many of us always snuck a few while making homemade Toll House cookies? Yet there are other reasons too, namely composition. The bars that some chefs use is high in cocoa butter which makes it more fluid when melted. It's perfect for coating bonbons, look at that shiny , snappy shells coating truffles and caramel. However what works for candy making doesn't necessarily work for baking according to Jacques Dahan, president of the chocolate company Michel Cluizel USA. Bakers want less cocoa butter for baking chocolate.Cocoa butter may give the recipe more  fat but so does dairy add ins like butter and milk. It is also expensive which is why the mass produced chocolate morsels have less of it. They have more cacao solids instead. These also yield more flavor too. Also you need a stronger flavor when mixing the chips with other ingredients like you'd find in a brownie recipe. In a flourless chocolate cake they shine through the creaminess of the butter and the richness of the eggs. They also help bind the other ingredients together in absence of flour.

Another plus to using chocolate chips is that they hold their shape in a hot oven. They give structure and height to chunky cookies and banana bread. There's no worry of them melting and creating gullies in the treat's surface. It was Ruth Wakefield, a Massachusetts housewife who first created the chips in the 1930's and the cookies named after the famed Toll House Inn. She sold the idea to Nestle for only a dollar and since then other companies have copied idea. To be honest there really isn't  the best. They all taste good, They all bake well.Donald Wressell, an executive chef at Guittard Chocolate Company suggests sampling a wide range first.This is what pastry chef  Jacqueline Eng and owner of New York's Partybus Bakery, She feels like she is a bread baker first so she experiments with the sweet ingredients. She feels that approaching chocolate can be intimidating because you can deep dive into sourcing beans from other counties. The best way is to just taste them and decide what works. she finally decided on Callebaut 54 percent cacao pellets. However during the pandemic she used chocolate chips from her local grocery and still received compliments on her cookies. 

Chocolate chips rule. They are perfect for baking yummy cookies or tasty banana bread. It doesn't matter what brand is used, they deliver a great taste and texture.