We’ve got heavy cream, heavy whipping cream, whipping cream, cream, evaporated milk, canned milk, condensed milk, sweet and condensed milk, half-and-half, whole milk, 2% milk, low-fat milk, and nonfat milk, which my grandchildren when given non-fat or skim milk, claim is just white water.

In this post we’re not talking about the junior league milk like coconut and almond milk on this team. Why? Because I don’t find it in any of my hand-dipped chocolate recipes. So as not to offend, I do concede there are games where the minor league milks perform valiantly.

Let’s move on. Hopefully, next time you’re standing there with the dairy case door open, and all the milk team is lined up, side by side on the shelves; you can think of the dairy case as the sidelines, the teammates on the bench ready to be sent into the game.

It wouldn’t really matter which player on the milk bench you send in, if it didn’t matter that each player will ultimately affect the consistency, texture, and flavor of the game.

In reality, the basic difference is fat content. Because the percentage of fat plays such an important role in performance; we’ll spend most of this article on that. The more the milkfat, the merrier in my opinion.

Meet our All-star milk lineup, introducing Team Milk

Let’s look at fresh milk straight from the cow. Early in our marriage, my wife and I bought a home in the middle of Northern Utah farmland. We leased the back half of our property to a neighbor who used our field for his cow. The lease payments consisted of fresh raw milk. Yep, it was liquid gold with all of its varied uses. That’s perhaps why I am so well-rounded. But I, and our children all have strong bones. Raw fresh milk is loaded with nutrients, after all, it’s designed to fully nourish a newborn. Just look at raw milk’s stat sheet.

Just one cup (244 grams) of whole cow’s raw milk contains:

• Calories: 150
• Protein: 8 grams
• Fat: 8 grams
• Calcium: 30% of the RDA
• Vitamin A: 6% of the RDA, along with the vitamin A, there’s magnesium,  zinc and thiamine (B1)
• Iron: 6% of the RDA
• Cholesterol: 10% of the RDA
• Sugars: 12 grams


Raw milk’s not just an excellent source of protein, it contains hundreds of different healthy fatty acids, including conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and omega-3s, high amounts of beneficial antioxidants, such as vitamin E and beta-carotene. The list goes on.

But since I don’t have a cow any longer, at least not that often, I have to recruit my players from the dairy case.

When it comes to milk there is much more than just the fat, but let’s stick with the fat for now.

Getting over the goal line requires a given combination of fat, sugar, and water. The amount of each or combination will vary the texture, flavor, and color. Different combinations of the eleven milks team members make up the play. Sometimes it’s a pouring play, other times a dipping play.

(A special note to all you sciency, chemists who think you know your way around confections, I welcome your comments. I don’t necessarily need to be the expert. I just need the candy fix and I need it as creamy and flavorful as possible. If you can help me out, do so… please.)

Heavy Cream and Heavy Whipping Cream

Heavy cream  is a clutch player for both sweet and savory recipes. Heavy cream contains between 36 and 40 percent milkfat and is thicker than light cream, whipping cream, half-and-half, whole milk, and evaporated milk. Heavy cream’s high-fat content means that it won’t curdle when heated, and is the best choice for whipping into stiff peaks.

Is heavy cream the same as heavy whipping cream?

Heavy cream and heavy whipping cream are actually the same product just with two different jerseys. According to the FDA, heavy cream and heavy whipping cream must contain at least 36% milkfat. Next time you see heavy cream and heavy whipping cream seated on the grocery store sidelines, you won’t have to think twice about which one to send into the game. Different position, same delicious dairy performance.

Heavy cream makes everything richer, creamier, and tastier.

Cream and Whipping Cream

Whipping cream contains between 30% to 35% milkfat, which means that it is a lighter product than heavy cream (heavy whipping cream). You guessed it, cream and whipping cream play the same position, just depends on what name was printed on the jersey.

The 5 percentage point difference in milkfat may not seem like a playmaker, but it can drastically change the richness and thickness of the finished confection. If you’ve ever scouted the performance, you know the lower fat content in whipping cream means that it won’t ever achieve perfectly stiff peaks when whipped. So, if you need to impress the crowds with whipped cream on pies or cakes, use heavy cream.

Half-and-Half

You might notice the trend here. The main difference between half-and-half and heavy cream is the milkfat content. Half-and-half is literally made with equal parts of heavy cream and milk. The FDA requires that half-and-half contains between 10.5% and 18% milkfat. Remember that heavy cream, on the other hand, is a thicker and richer cream that contains at least 36% milkfat, nearly double that of half-and-half.

Watch out for fat-free half-and-half. If you take out the fat, it’s something else. Likely skim milk with corn syrup and a bunch of other stuff. Stay with the real stuff. If you don’t want fat, eat vegetables instead of candy.

Real half-and-half is lower in fat and offers some benefits of creamy milk but it won’t whip like cream.

When to use half-and-half

If you’re trying to cut back on fat, half-and-half is a suitable substitute. However, don’t try to whip half-and-half for whipped cream; the product doesn’t contain nearly enough milkfat to form luscious stiff peaks that will hold their own shape.

Half-and-half is the perfect way to add a silky richness to caramel sauce.

Heavy Cream and Milk

You can easily make half-and-half by mixing equal parts heavy cream and milk and shaking vigorously.

You can also use half-and-half in recipes that call for nearly equal parts of heavy cream and milk. For example, instead of using 1 cup of heavy cream and 1 cup of milk, you can safely substitute for 2 cups of half-and-half.

A mid-article sum-up.

•               Heavy cream contains between 36 and 40% milkfat.
•               Whipping cream contains between 30 and 35% milkfat.
•               Light cream contains between 18 and 30% milkfat.
•               Half-and-half contains between 10.5 and 18% milkfat.

Evaporated Milk

Our other crowd-pleasing favorite is evaporated milk (which is not the same as condensed milk) but (is the same as canned milk) but (condensed milk which also comes in a can usually brings to mind Sweet and Condensed Milk). Get it right. And you will if you keep reading.

Evaporated milk is milk. It’s usually sold in cans, and made by removing about 60 percent of the water from ordinary milk. Milk is homogenized and then the water is removed with gentle heat. The more dense milk is sealed in cans which are then heated to kill any bacteria in the milk. The process of heating the evaporated milk in the cans imparts a slightly sweet flavor to the milk and it’s just a bit darker in color than ordinary milk. It has a similar viscosity to half-and-half.

It adds more creaminess than fresh milk with less fat than regular cream. It is also frequently used in place of half-and-half. Evaporated milk tastes like milk but with a thicker, less watery consistency.

Sweet and Condensed Milk

Condensed Milk Vs Evaporated Milk

As I just pointed out so eloquently, it’s important to note that condensed milk and evaporated milk are not the same player. Yet, evaporated milk is basically unsweetened condensed milk. Both of these players have about 60% of their water removed. However, they are not interchangeable at all — they are very different in consistency, flavor, and function. On average, sweet and condensed milk contains about 45% sugar which is added after condensing the milk. This helps give the ingredients their thick, shiny, gooey consistency.

I consider sweet and condensed milk as a special-teams player because, it gives that little extra point or when you can’t get over the goal line the right way or you’re impatient, you score your sweet goal the lazy way. Thus, Sweetened Condensed Milk is an incredibly functional player. Naturally, it sweetens up the playing field.

But, it also functions as a tenderizing ingredient that adds moisture. And, the high amounts of sugar in the product helps give the golden-brown color when the sugars caramelize during heating.

What adds to the confusion is that both evaporated or sometimes called canned milk and sweet and condensed milk are both sold in cans, which helps preserve this perishable ingredient. What also helps extend the shelf life in sweetened condensed milk is the high concentration of sugar and lack of water. All-in-all, when unopened, this product can last for years!

Heavy cream has an endless amount of uses. It helps enrich recipes while adding a ton of moisture. It can add a bit of color to baked items when the sugars caramelize.

Plus, it is a fantastic ingredient that can help bind others together. It adds tenderness, creaminess, and an overall softer texture to any item.

Now as for 2% and 1% low-fat milk and non-fat or skim milk, they’re seldom sent into the candy game. They’re too lightweight for the demanding plays we run in the hand-dipped chocolates Super Bowl.

I think it really comes down to richness, creaminess, and smoothness,

Now the most important thing about regular whole milk is that it is the most thoughtful and compassionate and universal ingredient in hand-dipped chocolates. It, without any selfish thought, gives of itself wholly to make sure your freshly baked chocolate chip cookies don’t get lonely. Not to mention it contributes to both the caramel and cream centers we use with hand-dipped chocolates by adding moisture, fat, and sugars.

https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/heavy-cream-substitute

http://milkfacts.info/Milk%20Composition/Milk%20Composition%20Page.htm

The post The All-star Milk Lineup – Team Milk first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

My discovery requires an explanation, or clarification, or admission of my ignorance; whatever.

Was the previous article wrong, naïve, or just inaccurate?

So, delving into the corn syrup ingredient controversy, I found myself vindicated. Corn syrup is not an additional ingredient at all, it’s just another form of sugar. Ha!

Corn syrup is simply a liquid sweetener. It’s a sugar made from cornstarch. Corn syrup comprises pure glucose, a simple sugar. Table sugar, the white crystal sugar I dump in my Cheerios and you into your coffee in the morning, consists of sucrose, which comprises glucose and fructose.

Because of its properties as a liquid sweetener, we use corn syrup in candies to provide shine and to prevent the crystallization of the sugars. Corn syrup also provides moisture to caramel, helping maintain its softness.

Let me defend the good name of the corn syrup we use while making caramel we use with hand dipped chocolates. Lots of nutty health folks these days (and I’m not talking about nuts in caramel, I’m talking about nuts in the media) like to confuse the public when they criticize high fructose corn syrup. Corn syrup is not the same thing as high-fructose corn syrup. High-fructose corn syrup, which you can’t buy in the supermarket or even in the mini-mart, is completely different. High-fructose corn syrup is a commercial sweetener that is made by taking ordinary corn syrup and converting some of the glucose into fructose by adding enzymes. That conversion makes it almost twice as sweet as table sugar. That extra sweetness, along with the fact that it is cheap to produce, makes high-fructose corn syrup ideal for commercially produced foods like soda, candy, etc. So, why are the nutty folks against high-fructose corn syrup? I guess because it will make you fatter, faster.

There are two varieties of corn syrup, light and dark. Light of course is colorless and has a pure, sweet flavor. The dark corn syrup includes molasses which gives it a darker color and more of the caramel-like flavor. You can interchange them, but the flavors are a bit different, as is the appearance.

Culinary experts with a bit more experience than me, claim corn syrup enhances not just my caramel, but its use pays off with homemade ice cream, sugary syrups and even cakes. It does this because corn syrup is such an excellent smoothing agent. It prevents hard crystals from forming in the sugar, which has the tendency to recrystallize making your finished product grainy or gritty, and yes, that is redundant.

Before I get all scientific here, let me state for the record – sugar is sugar, and I’m a big fan. In fact, because of sugar, I am big. So, let’s get that out of the way. But while we talk about such sweet things, let’s talk sugar in general. There’s more to sugar than just the white stuff on the table and corn syrup in the cupboard. I mentioned glucose and fructose, but what about all the other ‘ose’ ending foods, like lactose, dextrose, and sucrose?

In an effort to confuse you and make smart people who think they know chemistry go crazy; let me explain what all these ‘ose’ sugars are. They’re disaccharides. I think that means ‘double sugars.’ In other words, they’re just different combinations of molecules that come from different plant and animal sources and they differ in the way the plant or animal creates and utilizes them and the way we extract and use them. They are the energy system for life. Wow, was that brilliantly said?” And then of course, if a disaccharide is a double sugar, then a monosaccharide is just a plain old lonely sugar. And yes, they are carbohydrates. (Now you can relax because I used a word you recognize)

Let’s briefly look at each of the common sugars.

SUCROSE

Sucrose, is table sugar, and it is the most common disaccharide that us non-dieting humans eat. It comprises the monosaccharides, glucose and fructose. When we digest disaccharides like sucrose, they break down into their simple sugars we use for energy.

MALTOSE

Maltose, also known as malt sugar, is formed from two glucose molecules. Malt is formed when grains soften and grow in water, and it is a component of beer, starchy foods like cereal, pasta, and potatoes, and many sweetened processed foods.

LACTOSE

Lactose, or milk sugar, is made up of galactose and glucose. The milk of mammals is high in lactose and provides nutrients for infants. I once read that most mammals can only digest lactose as infants, and when humans are able to digest dairy products in adulthood, it’s because they have a mutation that allows them to do so. I also read that this mutation became prevalent in our populations around 10,000 years ago. I need to get a t-shirt that says I’m a proud mutant.

TREHALOSE

Trehalose is also made up of two glucose molecules like maltose, but the molecules link differently. We find trehalose in certain plants like fungi, and in animals like shrimp and insects. They say the blood sugar of many insects, such as bees, grasshoppers, and butterflies, is made up of trehalose. Because of it breaks down efficiently, it provides rapid energy for flight.

LACTULOSE

Lactulose is formed from fructose and galactose. It mostly has medical uses. Some countries use it in food, but not in the United States, where it’s viewed as a pharmaceutical that might potentially harm diabetics.

CELLOBIOSE

Like maltose and trehalose, cellobiose is also made up of two glucose molecules, but they are linked even more differently. Since I don’t wish to learn more science that doesn’t result in the taste of my caramel. This is all the ‘ose’s we’ll discuss here.

From all of this ‘ose’ rambling, what we need to know is, we often use corn syrup in making our caramel because it’s a great sweetener and an outstanding agent in helping the other sugars behave themselves. Corn Syrup is not mandatory. We use a variety of recipes for caramel, and they don’t all call for corn syrup. But now you know why with some, we do. In a future article, we’ll cook two versions side by side and compare the final products.

The post Corn Syrup, The Sweetener For All Ages first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

From an entire tray of hand dipped chocolates, my two favorites are the chocolate dipped caramels and the chocolate dipped turtles. I concede that turtles are made up of caramel and pecans – (I admit pecans are nuts.)

Why? Like any of our favorites, it’s the flavor & texture combination.

At the risk of offending our chocolate purists, who pride themselves in claiming the rich romantic Mesoamerican heritage of chocolate’s ancestry; caramel has an uncertain and questionable ancient past. Though caramel and caramel candies have been with us for centuries, their exact origins are a bit murky. We may question their family tree.

All my extensive research leads me a thousand years back to the Arabs. When I think about the Arabs, I don’t ponder the peace accords or middle east conflicts or even caramel. My mind reflects back to Ahab the Arab. Ahab however has nothing to do with caramel, so I’ll let you figure it out. Except maybe all the caramel historians got it wrong and they thought they were researching camels not caramels. But that’s your issue.*

Some say the Arabs first discovered caramel around 1000 A.D. Again, I don’t know who “some” really is, or is that are? But suffice to say, what we believe is there is evidence that around 1,000 A.D. the Arabs were crystallizing sugar to make what translators think the Arabs called a “kurat al milh” or “sweet ball of salt” or  “ball of sweet.” These first caramels aren’t like the caramel we enjoy today. That ball of sweet was a hard candy – rock hard – solid hard. That was due to the combination of sugar and water they were boiling over kettles.

Some say one form of this crystallized sugar and water mixture was used mainly in the beauty industry for waxing and sugaring—something I know nothing about. It was only later that the ‘ball of sweet’ became a confection.

Eventually, those tired of chipping their teeth, learned they could toss some milk and a little fat into the kettle and the results were a creamy texture with some stretchy consistency – basically more like our modern-day caramel.

Theory holds that somewhere in the mid 1600’s fat and milk became the more common tools to give caramel its chewiness.

Theory aside, we know that when milk solids and fats are heated with sugar and allowed to caramelize, we get some version of our current types of caramel. Note that we use the verb version (caramelize) of our noun (caramel) here. The Arabs probably didn’t know how to use verbs as nouns and so historians couldn’t accurately record the history of caramel and that’s why caramel’s origins are murky.

But in modern implementation of verbs and nouns, caramel remains a favorite treat because the nouns include sugar, milk, corn syrup and fat (butter). The verbs are ‘to heat’ and ‘to stir.’ Throw in an adverb; ’constantly’ and you have chocolate’s BFF.

Any wonder caramel has been so popular and remains a favorite sweet treat? It’s all about simple ingredients combined in just the right way. The results are delicious.

Jumping forward a few hundred years, caramel’s popularity increased greatly when Milton S. Hershey began his first successful candy business in 1886 called the Lancaster Caramel Company. Because you’re smart and you read what I said first, you quickly thought of the second candy company. But let’s stick with the first company Lancaster Caramel Company, which after it was established, was shipping caramel candies across the United States and to Europe.

Hershey’s introduction of caramel candies grew on a grand scale. Since then, caramel candy has taken on many forms and textures, such as sauces, creams, hard and soft candies, and glazes for foods such as popcorn.

Let’s get a little more granular. (Purposely a pun)

We’ve covered the fact that caramel is a combination of a few simple ingredients—sugar, water, fat, and milk. Now when combined in different orders, they will yield very different forms of caramel.

For instance, the traditional “dry method” of caramel making starts with boiling just your sugar, (yes, just melting the sugar dry) and adding the other three ingredients after. The other alternative “wet method” boils sugar and water together as one, and then adds the fat and milk later—this is what most caramel manufacturers do.

Depending on the method that you choose, your caramel will look and taste quite different—the dry method leads to a thicker, darker caramel that is used in hard candy, while the wet method results in the good stuff used for hand dipped chocolates.

Oh, and by the way, during the Lancaster Caramel Co.’s final years, Hershey shifted his focus toward chocolate and created the Hershey’s Chocolate Company as a subsidiary of Lancaster. Then in 1900, Hershey sold off the entire caramel business to The American Caramel Company for a sly $1 million thinking that it was just a fad and chocolate had more long-term potential. What’s he thinking now?

*

The post The History of Caramel first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

Hello! Of course they are, that’s a silly question, even if no one actually ever asked it.

Let’s look at the facts. First: The more ingredients you add to any food, the odds that something nefarious sneaks in increases.

Homemade hand dipped chocolates have only five basic pure ingredients:

1. Cream

2. Butter

3. Sugar

4. Corn Syrup

5. Love

From here the various types of hand dipped chocolates may include nuts, vanilla or other flavor extracts, all innocent, I assure you. Except for the rum flavor. I’m not convinced rum is all so innocent. Too many people dive into a box of chocolates and hog up the rum flavored first, and then ask ‘Why’s the rum gone?’

As for the chocolate, (and we will dive into the differences between the various chocolate brands we use in future articles) we favor milk chocolate as our mainstay, in which there are six ingredients.

1. Sugar – as mentioned in an earlier article about the origins of chocolate, it’s the Europeans who added sugar to the pure chocolate of the original Mesoamericans, so it’s their fault we’re addicted.

2. Cocoa butter

3. Milk

4. Unsweetened chocolate

5. Soya lecithin

6. Pure vanilla

A word about the soya lecithin since that’s a fancy sounding ingredient. Soya lecithin is listed last as an ingredient because so little of it is used. Soya lecithin is an *emulsifier added to chocolate to lower its viscosity. This gives a more consistency to the chocolate, which becomes easier to temper and to mold. (A future article will focus on tempering chocolate. You may notice we talk about the future a lot. That’s because there’s no time like the present to put things off till the future.)

 So that’s about it for the ingredients in our hand dipped chocolates.

Compare that simplicity to commercial chocolates. According to packaging, an Almond Joy, which is similar to our popular coconut chocolate, features an ingredient list that reads like a scientific journal.

“Corn Syrup, Sugar, Coconut, Vegetable Oil (Palm Oil, Shea Oil, Sunflower Oil, Palm Kernel Oil, and/or Safflower Oil), Almonds, Chocolate, Skim Milk, Contains 2% or Less of Lactose (Milk), Cocoa, Whey (Milk), Salt, Lecithin (Soy), Milk Fat, PGPR, Cocoa Butter, Hydrolyzed Milk Protein, Sodium Metabisulfite (to Maintain Freshness), Vanillin (Artificial Flavor).

Notice how the cocoa butter, which is a real ingredient is toward the end of the list, that’s because not much is in it. In our hand dipped chocolates the cocoa butter is high on the list. Just sayin’

Now, in Russell Stover’s turtles, which are supposed to compare to our home made turtles which consist of pecans smothered in caramel and dipped in chocolate, we find another rocket scientist collection of ingredients:

‘CHOCOLATE CANDY {MALTITOL, CHOCOLATE, COCOA BUTTER, SODIUM CASEINATE (MILK), MILK FAT, SOY LECITHIN (AN EMULSIFIER), SUCRALOSE, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SALT), MALTITOL SYRUP, PECANS, POLYDEXTROSE, PALM KERNEL OIL, SODIUM CASEINATE (MILK), MALTITOL, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, SOY LECITHIN (AN EMULSIFIER), FD&C COLORS (YELLOW #5 & #6, RED #40, BLUE #1) AND SODIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVATIVE).’

Do I need to go on? In an earlier post one of our focus group members claimed a reason our hand dipped chocolates are so special is because they are fresh. That it true, we never add mafia characters like Sodium Metabisulfite and Sodium Benzoate to maintain freshness. We don’t have to. Hand dipped chocolates never last long enough to go stale.

So if you ask if our hand dipped chocolates are healthier? Reports from many scientific journals claim that happy people who are loved, are healthier people, so we can comfortably say yes. After all, what’s a happy loved smile worth? *And I thank “The Chocolate Journalist”  in an article I found very informative for helping me appreciate how the emulsifiers work in chocolate. https://www.thechocolatejournalist.com/blog/soy-lecithin-chocolate

The post Are Your Hand Dipped Chocolates Healthier? first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

Back sometime in the early 1960’s, which is after the Spanish conquered the new world and took the cacao bean back to Europe and ruined it by adding sugar and figuring out how to mold into bars to addict innocent children and lonely women; my mother learned how to turn her kitchen into a devilish addiction factory.

It was Myrtle Rappeley!* She is to blame. Just as the Spanish introduced xocolati to the unsuspecting royal courts in Europe, Myrtle introduced my mother and her best friend Mona Brown to the art of hand dipping chocolates. If I remember the details correctly as they played out some 60 years ago, (I don’t dare ask my siblings if this story is true because those older than me have lost their minds and those younger were too young to pay attention.) our local church congregation was participating in the building of a new chapel and everyone was expected to contribute a certain amount of money to the construction. The group of Relief Society women, as they are called, were asked to generate a portion of the assessment. As my mother was one of the leaders of this local group of women. It was suggested they make homemade hand-dipped chocolates and sell them to fund their portion of the new building’s construction.

When Myrtle suggested they make hand-dipped chocolates my mother responded saying, “I don’t know how to make hand-dipped chocolates.” Myrtle quickly said, “you will.” How prophetic she was.

The chocolates were not only wildly popular but the fund raising effort was wildly successful. The tradition of hand dipping chocolates began.

My mother’s sisters, all magicians in their own kitchens, went all-in as well. This art of hand dipping chocolates spread quickly through my mother’s family. To this day, the tradition lives on.

This past Christmas season, fourth and fifth generation grandchildren participated in the process of making hand-dipped chocolates, including my sons and daughter. I’m not talking about just the eating part of the process, my young grandchildren, nieces and grand nieces are quite proficient at hand dipping.  And of course we’ve all mastered the eating process as well.

Thank you Mom.

*Quote from Myrtle’s obituary – “She was especially famous for her hand-dipped chocolates, buttercream mints, and toffee.”

Obituary of Myrtle (Hess) Rappleye

The post How Did It All Start? first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

A dear friend with whom we’d shared a box of hand dipped chocolates asked how many boxes like the one he’d received did we produce and share with friends and family.

When I told him, he did a bit of math and said “that must cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars.” I confirmed that “yes in deed it did.” He paused and said, “and that doesn’t even begin to include all the time and energy.” I confirmed his assessment with a nod.

He then asked the question that led me to the theme of this post. “Why do you do it?”

Each year when we’re up to our elbows in chocolate, butter, cream and nuts, I ask that same question. I’ve long since given up trying to speed it up or cut corners to save on the time and energy part. My wife – the brains and talent behind our hand dipped chocolates tradition, claims “it’s a labor of love.”

Love trumps all the logic levied to streamline the efforts.

Reflecting on the countless complements, rave reviews, thank you’s, etc. this past year, I couldn’t help but ask, “why are hand dipped chocolates so much better received and appreciated than the many commercial chocolates?”

So I did. I went around asking what made our hand dipped chocolates so much better than other chocolates.

I got answers, like “They’re creamier,” “they’re smoother,” “the chocolate blends with the centers better,” “their mellow flavor is not so overpowering,” “their texture is more fine,” “they’re fresher.” Variation of answers like these came to a screeching halt when my 11 year old grandson, just as confident as any fine chocolate connoisseur could be, simply said, “It’s the love.”

That says it all. You can buy, and spend, and mix, and dip, but the magic, the secret, the unpatentable ingredient is love.

The post Why Hand Dipped Chocolates Are Better first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.

The study of the history of chocolate will bring a giant smile to the face of any serious connoisseur of this ancient currency. (Not to mention the smile when you stuff some into your mouth – liquid or solid.)

The word currency was not a mistake, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The smile comes when you see how archeologists, anthropologists, etymologists, and the other sundry ologists try to put a finger on the origin of the world’s favorite addiction—chocolate.

In the words of Inigo Montoya, “No, there is too much, let me sum up.”

To make it easy, I will use the term “cacao to refer to the plant or its beans before processing. “Chocolate” refers to anything made from the beans and “cocoa” will refer the chocolate in powdered form.

They say chocolate was invented by the folks in Mesoamerica. That’s somewhere between Texas and Chile. More accurately, there is clear evidence from the aforementioned smarty folks that chocolate was an important drink in Central and South America as early as 400 to 500 AD. Others say a millennia or two before that.

Lots of evidence shows the cacao had its beginning in Mesoamerica. The Aztecs, Mayan’s and even the Inca as far south as southern Ecuador, (and likely their predecessors) considered chocolate the drink of the Gods. Yet, there is evidence that the early residents as far north as Central Utah had chocolate nearly 1200 years ago. (That’s before the pioneers)

Some claim it was the Olmec in ancient Mexico and then later the Mayans who poured a mixture of roasted and ground cacao seeds, mixed with chiles, water and maize to make a frothy beverage called xocolati. My bet is that the natives offered the Spanish conquerors a nice hot chocolate that was fermented and the translators couldn’t spell worth a hoot so they wrote it xocolati.

None the less, when the conquistadors showed up, they realized gold wasn’t nearly as valuable to the natives as was cacao beans. Cacao beans were used as currency. One bean could buy you a tamale, and a hen turkey could be purchased for 100 beans.

One Spanish chronicler reported he witnessed that when loading a bundle of the cacao beans, some spilled and the indigenous peoples hurried to pick up each bean.

Well, the cacao bean made it back to Europe where of course the snoots there couldn’t deal with the bitterness so they added sugar and voila, an addiction was born.

Over the decades, production processes became more efficient and thus the cost declined and the rich and famous were no longer the only folk to afford the chocolate craze.

Cacao plantations spread as the English, Dutch and French colonized and planted. Chemists got involved and figured out how to remove some of the bitterness by introducing alkaline salts to chocolate, then they figured out how to remove much of the natural fat, which we know as cocoa butter which made chocolate cheaper to produce and more consistent in quality. The guy was probably Dutch so they call it Dutch Cocoa. That was when chocolate began really taking on a solid form when they figured out how to add the cocoa butter back in. It’s all really sciency and we’ll get into the details of it and why it matters in future articles.

Then in 1875 a guy by the name of Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate by mixing in powdered milk which was developed by a guy named Henri Nestle. A few years later Rodolphe Lindt invented a machine that further improved the process and the quality of the solid chocolate. Do you recognize a few names? Along came John Cadbury and William Hershey in the 1800’s and well, now most of us sensible folk are just willing to use our currency to acquire the brand and flavor we like best and where the Mayan’s and Aztecs, used chocolate for religious purposes, as aphrodisiacs, healing and status, we civilized folk use chocolate religiously to woo our women, seduce our men, heal broken hearts, calm harried nerves, sugar up our grandchildren and mostly feed our addiction.

And if you don’t believe me, wander through a few references you’ll find at www.handdippedchocolates.com.

word chokol meaning hot, and the Nahuatl atl meaning water.

References

1. Watson, Traci (22 January 2013). “Earliest Evidence of Chocolate in North America”. Science. Retrieved 3 March 2014.
2. Kerr, Justin (2007). “History of Chocolate”. Field Museum. Retrieved 2014-03-03.
3. Schnepel, Ellen (Fall 2002). “Chocolate: From Bean to Bar”. Gastronomica. 2 (4): 98–100. doi:10.1525/gfc.2002.2.4.98.
4. Bensen, Amanda (March 1, 2008). “A Brief History of Chocolate”. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 3 March 2014.
5. Terry G. Powis; W. Jeffrey Hurst; María del Carmen Rodríguez; Ponciano Ortíz C.; Michael Blake; David Cheetham; Michael D. Coe; John G. Hodgson (December 2007). “Oldest chocolate in the New World”. Antiquity. 81 (314). ISSN 0003-598X. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
6. “Sweet discovery: New UBC study pushes back the origins of chocolate”. UBC News. 29 October 2018.
7. “The use and domestication of Theobroma cacao during the mid-Holocene in the upper Amazon”. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 2 (12): 1879–1888. doi:10.1038/s41559-018-0697-x.
8. Thompson, J. Eric S. (1956). “Notes on the use of cacao in Middle America”. Middle American Archaeology. Cambridge Mass. 128: 95–116.
9. “Medicinal and Ritualistic Use for Chocolate in Mesoamerica – HeritageDaily – Heritage & Archaeology News”. www.heritagedaily.com. Retrieved 2018-05-07.
10. Magazine, Smithsonian; Fiegl, Amanda. “A Brief History of Chocolate”. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2022-12-01.
11. Spadaccini, Jim. “The Sweet Lure of Chocolate”. Exploratorium. Retrieved 2014-03-03.
12. Dillinger, Teresa L.; Barriga, Patricia; Escárcega, Sylvia; Jimenez, Martha; Lowe, Diana Salazar; Grivetti, Louis E. (2000-08-01). “Food of the Gods: Cure for Humanity? A Cultural History of the Medicinal and Ritual Use of Chocolate”. The Journal of Nutrition. 130 (8): 2057S–2072S. doi:10.1093/jn/130.8.2057S. ISSN 0022-3166.
13. TED-Ed (2017-03-16), The history of chocolate – Deanna Pucciarelli, archived from the original on 2021-12-19, retrieved 2018-05-07
14. Norton, Marcy (April 2004). “Conquests of Chocolate”. OAH Magazine of History. 18 (3): 16. doi:10.1093/maghis/18.3.14. JSTOR 25163677.
15. Magazine, Smithsonian; Fiegl, Amanda. “A Brief History of Chocolate”. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2022-12-01.
16. Kaufman, Terrence; Justeson, John (2007). “The history of the word for Cacao in ancient Mesoamerica”. Ancient Mesoamerica. 18 (2): 193–237. Retrieved 18 June 2021.
17. Klein, Christopher (February 14, 2014). “The Sweet History of Chocolate”. History. Retrieved 2014-03-03.
18. “Top 10 Cocoa Producing Countries”. WorldAtlas. Retrieved 2017-10-09.

The post The History of Chocolate first appeared on handdippedchocolates.com.