Curious about sugar free melting chocolate? Chocolatier Simon Knott reflects on the best sugar-free melting chocolate brands & how they perform for chocolatier tasks including melting and tempering.
Over the past three decades, technological advancements in manufacturing sugar-free chocolate have been nothing short of a revolution. Sweetness was the first hurdle, followed by the need to bulk products to mimic the texture and mouthfeel of conventional chocolates.
Today, amateur chocolate cooks and professional chocolatiers, now have access to sugar-free chocolate that performs just as well as the regular sugar-sweetened varieties. In this guide, we dive into all things sugar-free chocolate, including the best brands to use, the types of sweeteners used, and how they perform for serious chocolatier tasks such as tempering.
Types of Sugar Free Melting Chocolate
More recent sweeteners, such as stevia, have a potent sweetening effect, but the small quantity needed in recipes means that ingredients have to be supplemented to replace the bulk of the missing sugar. Often, functional side effects of sweeteners add extra benefits, too, such as less tooth decay and more balanced blood sugar levels.
As the limitations of processed foods become more prevalent in the press, customers have developed an increasing interest in functional nutrition with natural ingredients. Refined sugar, in particular, has often been demonized as an ingredient high in calories and not only devoid of nutrition but also linked to diabetes and heart disease.
Factors to Consider When Choosing Melting Chocolate
When choosing a sugar-free chocolate brand, you need to consider things like:
Sugar Free Melting Chocolate Sweeteners
Some sugar-free chocolate manufacturers use sugar alcohols, such as maltitol or erythritol, found naturally in starch, to sweeten their products. Maltitol has a similar sweetness to sugar, but it often has a laxative effect if more than 100 g of maltitol chocolate is eaten in one day.
Other manufacturers turn to sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, or natural stevia. Customer suspicions over some of these manufactured sweeteners continue, so much so that aspartame is now one of the most researched food ingredients in the world. So, the sweetener you are prepared to accept has to be a personal choice.
Weight-for-weight, these sweeteners have a much more powerful sweetening effect than sugar, but they contain no calories. Chicory root fibre or inulin is becoming popular as an alternative to sugar and other sweeteners. It produces a better taste in chocolate than other sweeteners and also helps to control blood sugar levels.
Alternatives to Sugar as a Bulking Agent
Sugar plays two roles in chocolate: sweetening and adding bulk. Commercially produced chocolate often has a high sugar content, which creates the sweetness customers enjoy and bulks out the finished product. However, when an alternative sweetener substitutes the sugar, it may not be able to provide adequate bulking.
Sweetening with stevia is a good example. Stevia is so intensely sweet (more than 200 times sweeter than sugar) that only a minute amount needs to be added to mimic the sugar’s sweetness. In response, fibrous, low-digestible carbohydrate polymers (LDC) have emerged. These offer bulk to chocolate recipes, but their digestibility and calorie content is inhibited.
Performance of Sugar Free Melting Chocolate
For the chocolatier, most sugar free melting chocolate still performs well in day-to-day tasks, such as dipping, tempering and making handmade chocolates. Even if the sugar has been replaced, the cocoa butter content remains the same, ensuring the same tempering and crystallization performance. Sugar-free chocolate has been shown to have similar melting and flow characteristics as conventional products.
When choosing sugar-free melting chocolate, always ensure the recipe contains cocoa butter. This essential ingredient is fundamental to chocolate’s melting and crystallization during tempering. Always check the manufacturer’s claims regarding the product’s performance with any new chocolate supplier.
Sugar Free Melting Chocolate Brands
Recommended commercial brands of sugar free melting chocolate include:
AUS
Atkins Endulge Milk Chocolate – 5 x 30g bars. With only 1.5g of sugar, they are high in fibre and low in carbohydrates.
The Carob Kitchen– 12 x 80g carob milk bars. Made with organically certified carob, cocoa butter, milk solids, vanilla and sunflower lecithin. It has similar melting and tempering properties to chocolate.
USA
Lakanto– 10oz/283g Ideal for cookies, truffles, fondue and other chocolate recipes. It is made from chocolate liquor, cocoa butter and is sweetened with erythritol and monk fruit extract. This makes it keto, vegan and gluten-free.
Ross Chocolates – 12 x 34g bars of dark chocolate. Made with cocoa mass, cocoa butter, inulin, erythritol, vanilla extract, and sunflower lecithin.
UK
Real Food Source– 1kg 36% cocoa solids milk chocolate – sweetened with maltitol. No unpleasant aftertaste and fewer calories. Ideal for professional chocolate recipes.
Real Food Source—1kg 60% cocoa solids dark chocolate sweetened with maltitol. This product has no unpleasant aftertaste, fewer calories, and reduced tooth decay. It is excellent for all chocolate coatings, decorations, and truffles.
