Your chocolate candy gift begins its life in the tropics.  It’s a bean that grows on the cacao tree found in Central and South America and Mexico.  Man has been enjoying chocolate for at least three millennia.  Early chocolate didn’t taste as good as your Hershey’s bar does today.  It was made into a beverage which tasted really bitter or it was added it to food for flavor.  The beans have to be fermented before they develop the smooth chocolate flavor we enjoy today.

The beans get fermented, dried, cleaned and roasted and removed from the shell.  They are then ground into a liquid, this is pure chocolate, it’s called chocolate liquor.  This chocolate liquor is then processed into two new products, cocoa solids and cocoa butter.  It’s from these two products combined in different portions and mixed with sugar, milk powder or condensed milk and vanilla that all our wonderful chocolate candy is created.

What’s your favorite type of chocolate?

Is it milk chocolate, this is a delicious combination of chocolate liquor, sugar, milk powder or condensed milk and vanilla?  Maybe it’s dark chocolate.  It’s made by combining cocoa liquor, sugar and cocoa butter and sometimes vanilla, this is the one with health benefits.  It contains good levels of antioxidants.  It’s also rumored to be an aphrodisiac.  And then there’s white chocolate, it’s actually a mixture of cocoa butter, milk, sugar and vanilla.  There are no cocoa solids in it at all, but it still has that chocolate taste.  Some people don’t consider white chocolate to be chocolate at all.  Unsweetened chocolate is pure chocolate liquor.  Its unadulterated chocolate, it really bitter and has a strong deep chocolate flavor.  It’s used for baking.

What gives chocolate that smooth melt in your mouth delight?

Emulsifiers are added to deliver you that smooth mouthfeel on your tongue you get as the chocolate melts.  The expensive gourmet chocolates are processed longer giving them a smoother texture without the addition of an emulsifier.

How much cocoa is really in my chocolate candy gift?

The gourmet dark chocolates like the Belgium, Swiss and Italian produce contain at least 70% cocoa butter and cocoa solids.  Milk chocolate will have up to 50% and the high quality white chocolate contain only 33% cocoa.  Some of the mass produced chocolate contain a lot less cocoa, some of them as low as 7%, and they use other fats instead of cocoa butter.  The cheap chocolates are made from poorly fermented or roasted cocoa beans so they use vegetable oil and imitation vanilla to mask the poor flavor.

Is Chocolate Toxic?

Yes it is if you’re a dog, cat, horse, parrot or small rodent.  There’s a substance in chocolate that these animals are unable to metabolize.  It gets into their bloodstream and can cause epileptic seizures, heart attacks, internal bleeding and finally death.  Dogs love the taste and smell of chocolate as much as we humans do.  The problem is they eat the whole thing; they don’t limit their selves to just a piece or two.  It’s really important to keep it out of their reach.

Do you think all this information about a chocolate candy gift will cause it to taste better the next time you indulge?   Probable not, but enjoy you will.

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