Sugar Savvy

With the holiday baking season almost upon us and with it a quest for quality ingredients, I thought that this week’s Chocolate Box would take a taste of See’s Candies’ Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips.  Also, since a chocolate chip’s destiny is often to be baked into a cookie, my teen-age son obligingly whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies for me.

Tasting Report

Description:  See’s chips are a dark, dark brown almost black in color, although the photograph of the package shows them a milk chocolate brown color.  The ones I bought had a bit of white bloom on them.  They are big for chips, about three-quarters of an inch in diameter.  They are also flat, with a distinctive swirl on top.  The chips are packed in a 16-ounce bag and are available on line and in the See’s Candies’ stores.  (For purposes of comparison, I raided my baking stash and took a look at a Nestle’s Toll House Semisweet Chip.  The Nestle’s chip was more triangular and a lot smaller, measuring in at about three-eighths of an inch in diameter.) 

Taste:  These are the chips for dark chocolate lovers.  No milk or milk fats in the chocolate.  They are a bit brittle with a hard snap when you bite into one straight from the package, but when they are baked into cookies they are transformed. They retain their disk shape and integrity, but they are soft and creamy.

Eating them right out of the bag, I felt a bit overwhelmed by a cocoa butter taste (a bit greasy and fruity), but then the chocolate began to melt in my mouth.  I was smitten.  The cocoa butter taste vanished replaced by chocolate that was smooth with a warm, winey note and with a very pleasant aftertaste that hung around for a while. (The control chips were also hard when you bit into them.  The cocoa butter taste was even more evident. When the chocolate began to melt in my mouth it was sharper, off balanced and somehow managed to taste like instant hot chocolate powder.  The aftertaste was not something I would want to linger around my palate.)

Once baked, the See’s Candies chips were softer and lost their cocoa butter overtones and the rich, full chocolate taste came through.  (No control chips were baked into cookies.)

See’s Trivia:  See’s Candies offers a chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back on the bag of chips.  (FYI - It’s not the recipe my son used for the cookie shown below.)

See’s Original Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

½ lb butter – cream well
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
2 ¼ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups See’s Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

Add sugars gradually to creamed butter, beating until smooth.  Beat eggs and vanilla into butter and sugar mixture.  Mix together flour, salt and baking soda, add to mixture and blend well.  Stir walnuts and chips into mixture.  Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet.  Bake at 375 degrees F 8-10 minutes.

Yield – 4 dozen cookies.

Ingredients:  Sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla. 

Nutrition Facts:  10 pieces (15 grams) have 70 calories with 40 of those from fat.  A serving does provide 1 gram of fiber.

Well Fed Network Rating:  As compared to other See’s Candies I’ve sampled, I would have to rate these chips as a 9 when eaten straight out of the bag and a 10 when baked on a scale of one to 10.  Pros:  Wonderful chocolate flavor can elevate the most basic baked good.  Cons:  Cocoa butter taste when eaten “raw.”  Chips might need to be chopped for some recipes because of size.