What sugar is in chocolate?

The overwhelming majority of chocolate is sweetened with ordinary refined cane or beet sucrose. It is chosen for reasons that have little to do with taste: it is crystalline, it grinds to a predictable particle size, it is dry, and it is cheap.

That dryness matters more than it sounds. Chocolate is a fat-continuous system and any moisture in the sugar risks seizing the mass during conching. Refined sucrose is about as dry an ingredient as exists.

Unrefined cane sugars — panela, rapadura, muscovado — carry molasses notes and more moisture, which makes them harder to work with and gives a noticeably different flavour. Some makers use them deliberately for exactly that.

Coconut sugar behaves similarly: more moisture, more flavour of its own, and a tendency to give a slightly grittier result because it grinds less readily.

Date sugar is not really sugar but dried ground fruit, and it does not dissolve into the fat phase at all. It is used in raw and unconched products where a grainier texture is accepted.

Sugar-free chocolate uses polyols — maltitol and erythritol most often — which are bulk sweeteners occupying roughly the same volume as sucrose. They crystallise differently, so these products temper on their own curve and set softer.

They are not lower in energy in any meaningful way, because cocoa butter supplies most of it. And maltitol in particular has a well-documented laxative effect at quantity, which EU labelling requires to be stated above 10% added polyols.

Stevia and monk fruit are intensely sweet rather than bulk sweeteners, so they cannot replace sugar's volume and are used alongside a bulking agent rather than alone.