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Using chocolate as an ingredient is a great way to add richness and bite to your cooking or baking. Chocolate is America’s favorite flavor. How can you go wrong with chocolate-flavored desserts and pastries? Cooking and baking with chocolate can be made simple, following a few general guidelines for handling chocolate.
Storing Chocolate Properly
Chocolate should be stored in a cool, dry place where there are relatively insignificant temperature fluctuations and in an area that is far from...
•Where To Look For The Best Chocolate Experience
The finest chocolate the world has to offer is usually not so readily available in the local supermarket. Those sold in convenience stores and groceries are the mass-produced ones we’ve all grown so accustomed to – Hershey’s, M&M’s, KitKat, Toblerone, Cadbury, and maybe a Lindt here and there. For a truly chocolate experience, you have to probe deeper and go to specialty shops. Italian, French, Belgian, Swiss, German, Japanese, and Spanish chocolates are sold in these little chocolate shops...
•In Search of the World’s Best Chocolate
Different people have different tastes when it comes to chocolate. Some may like it rich, dark and bitter, while others may prefer it creamy, velvety and milky. Whether dark or milk chocolate, there are still some chocolates considered to be the best in the world, usually by chocolatiers, chocolate experts and critics. Below are some of the chocolates held to be the standard of high-end chocolate.
Chocolate from Italy
The best chocolate in the world, as voted by the Academy of Chocolate in...
•Stay Healthy, Eat Chocolates!
When we think chocolate, we think of mindless indulgence and guilty pleasures, not health benefits. Indeed, it is more like the antithesis of health and nutrition in our minds as we have learned since we were little kids—that eating copious amounts of chocolates can have dire consequences and therefore forbidden to some extent (you can’t eat it before a meal as well as during nighttime). But thanks to new scientific findings, it turns out that chocolates have health benefits too, particularly...
•Stimulate Your Senses With Chocolates
Not only are chocolates pleasurable and sinfully delicious, they also stimulate your mind and give you a boost of energy especially when you’re on the go. Eating a chocolate a day can have wonderful benefits for your mind and your well-being, as longs as you watch your over-all calorie and sugar intake for the day. Chocolates contain various ingredients that affect your brain and body chemistry. Some people even attest to its potency as an aphrodisiac and is said to elevate the mood. Some of...
•The Allure of Gourmet Chocolate
Nothing beats the taste of a truly divine chocolate that is made with the finest and purest ingredients. For the chocolate connoisseur, only gourmet chocolate will do; chocolate that is surely no 50-cent treat but a luscious indulgence that is meant to be savored and cherished like good wine and good food. In recent years, more and more chocolatiers are putting up chocolate shops, creating hand-made chocolate and confections that contain higher cacao levels than those mass-produced chocolates...
•The Process of Making Chocolate
Making chocolate involves a long process, from the cacao tree to the hands of the farmers to the factory to the hands of the master chocolate maker.
From Nature to the Factory
Chocolate comes from processed cacao beans, harvested from the cacao tree. Cacao trees only grow in tropical climates, 10 to 20 degrees north and south of the equator. The first cacao trees grew in the Amazon basins, north of Brazil. Today it is grown and cultivated in many tropical countries such as Ghana, Brazil,...
•The Sophisticated Buyer’s Guide to Chocolate
Not just because it’s chocolate, it’s good; maybe when you’re five years old, it does not matter that much—chocolate is chocolate is chocolate. But when you’re a little older, your taste matures, and you’re expected to have a little “sophistication” especially when it comes to something as luxurious as chocolate. Not knowing your Hershey from your Valrhona might make you miss some of the most pleasurable chocolate experiences in life. Below are simple guidelines to make you become more...
•How to Store Chocolates Properly
Chocolate, when not stored properly, can lose its richness and flavor and may become stale. It is very sensitive to humidity and temperature. Proper storage and packing is needed to preserve its freshness and wonderful taste and aroma. The ideal storage temperature for chocolate is between 15 and 17 °C (59 to 63 °F) with a humidity that is less than 50%. Chocolate also easily absorbs aroma and should be stored separately from other foods, especially those with strong aromas such as herbs,...
•A Brief History Of Chocolate
Throughout history, chocolate has captured the hearts of men and women the world over. Chocolate is produced from the seed of cacao, a tropical tree that is native to South America. Cocoa seed has an intensely bitter taste, and thus needs to be fermented first for its flavor to mature. After fermentation, the seeds are dried, then cleaned, and finally roasted. The shells of the seeds are removed, producing what is called cacao nibs, which are then ground and made into liquid. The result is...
•Best Chocolates in the World
Different people have different preferences and tastes when it comes to chocolates. Some like their chocolate sweet and milky, while others like theirs dark, rich and bitter. Chocolate is made in different places around the world and each country or place has its own distinctly unique chocolate product. U.S. chocolates tend to taste distinctly different from French chocolates, as well as from Belgian or Swiss chocolates. The best kind of chocolate depends on the taster or eater.
In general,...
•Chocolates From Around the World
Chocolates from around the world vary in taste, flavor, and potency depending on their country of origin. Below are the top chocolates in the world, by country.
Mexican chocolate
Mexico is the birth place of chocolate, from the chocolate drink “chocolatl,” a luxurious drink which was available as early as 400 AD. The drink was made from liquefied cocoa beans, spiked with chili pepper, vanilla, and annatto. Today, chocolate is a staple and highly valued commodity for Mexicans, and is most...
•Choosing Healthy Chocolate
Abstaining from chocolate is surely not an easy feat. The joy of chocolate is just too hard to resist even when it is loaded with sugar that obviously takes a toll on our health. Luckily, recent studies have shown that chocolate has tons of health benefits, particularly dark chocolate because it contains higher levels of cocoa and thus contain more antioxidants that’s even higher than black tea and red wine. Still, sugar levels in milk chocolate and white chocolate is enough to give the...
•Healthier Chocolate For Guilt-Free Indulgence
In recent years, chocoholics and chocolate lovers have more reasons to celebrate and to eat more chocolates with less of the guilt. Recent studies show that cocoa actually contains a substantial amount of antioxidants that is even higher than black tea or red wine! That’s a lot of antioxidants to help fight free radicals that cause various ailments, from heart disease to cancer. Chocolate studies also show that cocoa lowers blood pressure and can offset chocolate’s high sugar level. Still,...
•How Chocolate Is Made
Making chocolate is a long process, beginning with the growing and cultivating of the cacao trees and to molding the liquefied cacao in the chocolate factories, and finally designed and added with different types of flavors and confections. From the plantation of cacao trees in South and Central Americas as well as from other cacao growing countries like Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ecuador, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Papua New Guinea, Cameroon, and Dominican Republic, to the wonderfully lined...
•Chocolate Makes A Great Gift For The Holidays
If you're not sure what to give to friends, family members, co-workers or just about anyone else, chocolate might be the answer. It's the perfect gift for the person who has everything, and just about everyone loves eating it. While there's a rare person or two who doesn't like chocolate, most of us enjoy it in one form or another. Whether you buy gourmet chocolate or less expensive candies, dark chocolate or milk chocolate, it makes a wonderful present for the holidays.
Gourmet chocolate...
•Famous Chocolate Companies
Almost everyone loves chocolate, from the Meso-American peoples who cultivated it thousands of years ago to the modern day chocoholic. There's a wide variety of choices out there, from low end chocolate flavored bars referred to as "confections" to the priciest dark chocolate truffle, which contains a real black truffle. In between, you'll find every kind of bonbon, fudge, candy bar, and other chocolate treats. Some companies have become extremely famous for their chocolate. Here are a...
•Famous Movies Featuring Chocolate
Chocolate is an important force in the world, and in many of our lives. While we might not think about it on a day to day basis, we'd definitely miss it if there was no more chocolate to be found. In addition, chocolate has been important in several movies and books over the years.
The three most popular of these films are probably the two adaptations of Roald Dahl's 1964 book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the film adaptation of Joanne Harris's 1999 book Chocolat. Here's some...
•Health Benefits of Dark Chocolate
Is dark chocolate really healthy for you? It's been advertised as being good for us, but it can be hard to tell what's real and what's not. If you're not sure whether the benefits you've heard about are really available from chocolate, here are some of the basics to help you decide.
Dark chocolate's primary benefit comes from flavonoids, a type of substance that falls under the umbrella of antioxidants. Many of the diseases we suffer from can be caused or aggravated by oxidant damage to our...
•Is Chocolate an Aphrodisiac?
We've all heard that chocolate, derived from the cacao bean and prized by Meso-American peoples, is also an aphrodisiac. However, to many of us, that claim seems suspect. Can eating chocolate really help you get in the mood? Here are some basic facts about chocolate to tell you whether its reputation as an aphrodisiac is just fluff, or the real thing.
Chocolate refers to raw and processed foods that come from cacao seeds. This tree is native to tropical South America, and has been...
•What is the Most Expensive Chocolate?
There's a huge variety of chocolate in the world, from the humble Hershey's bar to high end, exotic chocolaty delights made by experienced chocolatiers. To many people, the colorfully wrapped chocolate bars you see in most stores aren't worth bothering with - they have a low cocoa content, and sometimes they aren't even legally called chocolate. That's what's going on if you see a candy bar described as a "chocolate confection" or covered in a "chocolatey coating". There's chocolate in there,...
•What's so Great About Belgian Chocolate?
You've probably heard a lot about Belgian chocolate. For many, it's the gourmet standard to measure all other types of chocolate confection by. Even Swiss chocolate got its start in Belgium, when Swiss chocolatiers imported the recipes they later altered. The thing that make Belgian chocolate unique is the quality inherent in it.
Most people in America are simply familiar with basic standards of chocolate such as a Hershey’s Chocolate Bar. Definitely a great product but there is a different...
•What's the Difference Between Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate?
We've all encountered both milk and dark chocolate in stores, and we've probably all eaten some of each. We know that milk chocolate tends to be softer and sweeter than dark chocolate, but we might not know much more. If you've been wondering what the real difference between milk and dark chocolate is, as well as all the other kinds out there, here are the basic facts.
We discovered that we could separate cocoa and cocoa butter from a processed cocoa bean. These substances are combined in...
•Why Do Kids Get Chocolate Coins on Religious Holidays?
You may have seen chocolate coins in bright gold and silver colored wrappers in the stores around mid-winter. Unless you're Jewish, you might not have known what these coins were for. While they're simply a tasty treat for the rest of us, these coins are a part of the Hanukkah celebration for Jews - they're called gelt, which is Yiddish for money.
Gelt is often given out to children to help them enjoy the holiday. Sometimes the gelt is in the form of real coins - the equivalent of stocking...
•Belgian Chocolate
There is chocolate and then there is CHOCOLATE.
There are the everyday variety to the more exotic Godiva and Ghirardelli-style that can be found in many coffee houses and specialty. Then there is Belgian, seen by many the best that can be had in chocolate. Belgian chocolates are considered the gourmet standard in which other chocolates are measured. Even by the Swiss, who are known for their own high standards of quality. The Swiss, who had imported the basic recipe from the French and the...
•All About Chocolate
From personal experience in dealing with a diabetic in my family, I know how difficult it is to look for a gift for a chocoholic who has to cut down sugar. The one thing about chocolate the diabetic person in my life is looking for is the one thing most chocoholics are looking for in sugar-free chocolate. That is that doesn't taste like it that is sugar-free. Since regular sugar is what gives regular chocolate it's taste, texture, feel good feeling. It is up to producers of chocolate to find...
•Sugarfree Chocolate
Taken from the experience of someone who has spent countless hours searching in the past for sugar-free chocolates for the diabetic chocoholic(s) in their life. I remember hours of pouring over the numerous catalogs only to find only one or two chocolate items.
Then not too many years ago the age of inter-net shopping started. There was maybe a lot less paper but the problem was still remained. Simply because not many people at that time were interested in making sugar-free chocolate. But as...
•Health Benefits of Chocolate
It often takes several small-scaled researches that show promise before the government steps in to help in financing larger scaled research. Such was the case with the health benefits of chocolate. Mostly it's because the FDA wants to know the preliminary studies done before they fund a major project.
It is the responsibility of the food companies to research the nutritional value of the products they produce. If they could fund the research through independent colleges and universities and...
•Can Chocolate Make People Happier?
When we're sad and stressed, what do many of us do? We resort to chocolate. There's a long history of people using chocolate to make themselves happier, but the question still remains: is there a scientific basis behind it, or is the mood boosting ability of chocolate just an old wives' tale? Here are the facts on the chemical composition of chocolate and how it can affect our moods.
One of the things that could account for the satisfaction we feel upon eating a lot of chocolate is that it's...
•Healthy Dark Chocolate
When people think of chocolate the thought that comes to mind is that sweet creamy taste. What most don't think about or know about is the health benefits. Now the chocolate that studies are showing that is healthy in small quantities is dark and not made with milk or drank with milk. Why? Good question.
The reason being is that milk neutralizes the large amounts of antioxidants present in dark chocolate. These antioxidants are what eat up free radicals, those are the destructive molecules...
•Diabetic Chocolates
For those who just found out that they are diabetic or simply want to go low-carbohydrate in their diet the hardest things to give up are pasta and breads. As a few of my diabetic friends and relatives have said those foods are a main part of their diet. So that leads to finding sugar-free alternates that taste good. Being diabetic doesn't mean that you have to give up on you favorite foods like pasta. There has been recent studies on soluble fiber to help in that dilemma. Soluble fiber has...
•Different Types of Chocolates
When people think of chocolate no two people are the same
Most chocolates that people are familiar with are dark, milk, white, semi-sweet, and maybe sugar-free.
But there are so many more out there.
Take AERATED chocolate for instance. It usually dark or white chocolate where air bubbles are introduced to the chocolate as it is being made.
And then there is FILLED Chocolate. It is a chocolate that additives were added. Things like nuts, jelly pieces, dried fruits and even cereals.
As for...
•Sugar Free Chocolate
When it comes to sugar-free or diabetic chocolate there is a warning on the label stating that it has a laxative effect. That is because when people enjoy too much of the chocolate that contains the sugar alcohol Maltitol it can result in digestive upset. The American Dietetic Association 'advises that more 50 grams of sorbitol or 20 grams of mannitol per day can cause diarrhea.
But the reason that diabetic chocoholics like it so much is that it is slowly absorbed in the intestinal tract so...
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