Cacao Barry Alunga is the most cocoa intense milk chocolate in the Cacao Barry range, a French couverture with 41% cocoa and 24% milk in an 11 pound bag of pistoles. It sits at the point where milk chocolate starts to taste like dark, and it is made for tablets, mousses, and ganaches that want creaminess without giving up chocolate character.

The color runs noticeably darker than a typical milk chocolate, and so does the flavor: pure cocoa out front, a roasted depth beneath it, and a milky creaminess that softens the edges without sweetening them. Subtle biscuity notes and a whisper of caramel round out the finish. Cacao Barry builds it on Forastero beans from Ivory Coast, and the result is a milk chocolate with the authority to carry a bar on its own, give a mousse or ganache real intensity, and still enrobe a praline with a smooth, even coat.

Cacao Barry Lactee Superieure (38%) is the creamier, more fluid sibling, better suited to thin bonbon shells. For a sweeter, caramel toned milk chocolate at a lower price point, Callebaut 823 Milk Chocolate Callets (33.6%) is the Belgian workhorse.