Do you know what a midge is? In case some don’t, it’s a disgusting little blood-sucking fly, sometimes known to campers as the evil “no-see-um”.  I was about to add a photo of a midge to this post, but then thought, why risk traumatizing my sensitive readers? So, if midges are so gross, why are they our friends? They’re our friends because of what they do to these lovelies:

Waitin' for my midge

Yes, those are the flowers of the beloved cocoa, and guess who services them pollination-wise? Our ugly little friend, the midge. Suddenly the song “Is She Really Going Out With Him” by Joe Jackson is running through my head for some reason.  That’s just how it is, right guys? But, without the despicable little midge (the exact type is Forcipomyiinae) the cacao flower would not get pollinated, no cacao pods would form; therefore no cocoa beans, no cocoa, no chocolate. The horror!

So next time one of those little bastards bites you, be sure to say, Thanks Midge!

Domenico Ghirardelli started his company in the mid 1800s in San Fransisco (though he did have an earlier shop in Peru). You would think this would make Ghirardelli the oldest chocolate maker in America, but it loses out by almost a century to Bakers chocolate (started 1765). In the early days, Ghirardelli sold, believe it or not, mustard (!) along with chocolate. Their original San Fran digs have become a bit of a tourist attraction. I’ve been there, but can remember almost nothing about it (except we had some good chocolate), so I can’t say worth making a special trip.

Although Ghirardelli Chocolate Co. was bought out by Swiss Chocolatier, Lindt in 1998, it still operates with a degree of independence. Like the Dagoba-Hershey’s partnership it’s apparently all about better distribution. Ghirardelli Co. oversees all aspects of production themselves and claim to maintain the highest standards for the quality of the cocoa beans the use. They roast the beans themselves and then grind them to an extremely fine powder.

Ghirardelli Luxe Milk

Like most of the large scale chocolate makers they have a lot of different products: straight chocolate in white, milk, and dark varieties with varying levels cocoa-mass density; chocolate squares with flovored fillings; drinking cocoa, and more. My personal favorite is their plain milk chocolate bar, called “Luxe Milk Chocolate Bar”. This one works well in my secret choco-espresso tastebud tantalizer.

Summary: Good chocolate.

The official name is “Lindt and Sprungli”. I can see why they generally like to go with just “Lindt” on the packaging, even though it sounds a bit, umm, dusty. “Sprungli” just sounds wrong – “Egads! This chocolate has gone all sprungli – alert the Oompah-loompahs!”

Lindt is based in Switzerland, where it all started back in 1845 in a small shop in Zurich. Interestingly that’s around the same time that Ghirardelli – the American company Lindt bought out in 1998 – got started in San Fransisco. Lindt has grown into a worldwide choc-glomerate (hey, I made up a new word!), mostly by buying out other companies like Ghirardelli. Other chocolate makers that have been absorbed into the Sprungli empire include the Austrian Hofbauer and Italian Caffare.

Of course, Lindt markets their own brand of chocolate too. I still remember their chocolate Easter Bunnies from when I was a child. Great stuff. That gives me an idea! This is the Chinese year of the Rabbit – sounds like a good reason to get some chocolate bunnies for the nieces and nephews. And I should order a couple of extras in case some get damaged in shipping – yeah, that’s the ticket.

Enough to buy a cup of cocoa?

I guess we should file this under Chocolate Trivia. Did you know (I didn’t until a minute ago) that the cacao bean was once used as money? Yep. In ancient Mesoamerica – from what is now Mexico on down through to the northern part of South America – the cacao bean was once legal tender, so to speak. According to some sources, the beans were used in place of coins right up into the 1800s in parts of the Yucatan peninsula

Back in the day, 80 beans or so would buy you a hip and trendy cloth mantle. (About the same as today if you shop at Banana Republic.) A mantle, by the way, is a piece of clothing kind of like a cape. The sort of thing you might wear nowadays if you were the Pope. But hang on to your beans ’cause I hear they’re coming back in style.

The Aztec empire used to receive tributes (i.e taxes) to the sum of up to about 8 million cacao beans. The use of fake cacao beans by scammers was not unknown…

A friend of mine is a bit of a food snob. Very nice guy, but tends to have pretty strong opinions about anything culinary. I’ll refer to him as Count Snobula (he’d find that funny rather than insulting, believe me) In a recent conversation he scoffed (yes, a genuine scoff – he’s British), at my preference for milk chocolate over dark chocolate. After I helped him up off the pavement, we started talking about whether there is a clear dividing line between darkness and light,  chocolate-ly speaking.

So I looked it up on the Internet, where everything you read is guaranteed to be true. And here is what I found.

The Dark Side
To be officially dark, chocolate must satisfy two main conditions: Firstly, it contains no milk. Simple and clear enough. The second condition seems to be a little less clear, but basically dark chocolate has to contain a lot of cocoa. As far as I can find out, the “official” minimum percentage of cocoa solids in dark chocolate is 35%, of which 18% must be cocoa butter. 35% seems kind of low to me. I’m sure I’ve seen and tasted up to 88%. Which, frankly was a bit of a chore to eat. Because, of course, the high cocoa content makes it bitter. Count Snobula would say that I don’t appreciate the high-cocoa dark chocolate, “because you’re a philistine from a place that culture has never even heard of, much less visited. Which is no doubt true, but it still tasteslike a dried mud pie to me.

Into the Light
On to light, or milk chocolate. With milk chocolate, there’s a bit less of the cocoa solids, and they are replaced by milk solids. Chocolatiers usually use dried or condensed milk for this. In Europe, there are two competing standards regarding what can officially be sold as milk chocolate. On the continent, milk chocolate needs to have at least 24% cocoa solids and 14% milk solids. The milk part has to have at least 3.5% milk fats – you’ll find no skimmed milk in your Belgian chocolate.

In Britain the standards are a bit more slack on the cocoa. I’ve read somewhere that the lower standards were introduced after World War II, when there were restrictions on food imports (i.e. cocoa). There, the minimum cocoa content is 20%. On the other hand milk chocolate in Britain must have 20% milk solids containing at least 5% dairy fat. So you end up with a more milky milk chocolate in jolly old England.

So, to summarize it simply, milk chocolate has some of its cocoa replaced by milk.

White Chocolate
The official chocolate powers that be appear to agree with my friend that white chocolate isn’t “really” chocolate at all. So the question is, “Then why is it called white chocolate?” First, the reason that white chocolate is technically not chocolate: no cocoa solids. Second, the reason why this non-chocolate is called chocolate: it contains lots of cocoa butter. To pass official muster, white chocolate needs to contain a minimum of 14% milk solids with said milk solids containing 3.5% or more dairy fat.

Does that settle it? Not really. Now I need to find out exactly what “cocoa solids” and “cocoa butter” are, and what the difference is. I can guess one thing though – it must be the cocoa solids that give chocolate its chocolaty color.

Ah, Monday morning. How about a little bit of Belgian chocolate with the morning espresso? Just to get the brain started. Yeah, I think I will. Which reminds me of a good chocolate quotation for a Monday morning.

Chocolate is God’s way of making up for Mondays

Have a happy Monday FWC readers!

Well, OK, that’s a tad over-stated. They aren’t “the” borg – there are others, too. Seriously, though, I’m really not a fan of Hershey’s chocolate. To my taste it’s always too sweet and lacks creamy richness and cocoa flavor. Oh, sure, I’ve enjoyed a Kiss or two from Hershey, but I swear it was mere sugar lust, without a trace of chocolaty romance. Brief, meaningless flings, having nothing to do with my true feelings for the real, true, chocolate love I now know.

I think I’ve stretched that metaphor to the breaking point, so let’s move on the actual content of this post.

Hersheys, besides the mediocre stuff they’re known for producing – the eponymous Hershey’s Bar, the Kiss, etc., also owns a whole bunch of smaller chocolate makers, including premium organic chocolatier, Dagoba.  As far as I can tell, the corporate behemoth hasn’t harmed Dagoba, its green approach to business, or its precious product in any way. On the contrary, it has given them wider distribution, allowing easier access to great chocolate for all of us. So I guess Hershey’s can’t be all that evil. And besides, they’re resposible for Reeses Peanut Butter Cups…

Dagoba is a chocolatier based in Oregon. the company is, of course, named after the Dagobah System in Star Wars, where Yoda lives. Yoda, being the wisest of the Jedi, was naturally a big chocolate eater, though that fact is omitted from the movies. Actually, I just made that up but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true, at least in a spiritual sense. According to information provided by the company, Dagoba is Sanskrit for “temple of the gods.” Close enough.

Dagoba makes premium organic chocolate. They also practice fair trade and are eco-friendly and socially responsible in their manufacturing and trade activities. As if that weren’t enough, Dagoba chocolate is also, apparently, certified kosher. So they’ve got you pretty well covered in terms of avoiding chocolate guilt. “Eat more chocolate, save the world”. It works for me…

Dagoba sell a bunch of different types of chocolate, with varying densities of cocoa content. I haven’t tried them all of course (yet!), but I really liked the Roseberry chocolate bar. It has 59% cocoa content, so it’s fairly strong, but not bitter, and it contains dried raspberries and rosehips. Raspberry has long been one of my favorite flavors to combine with chocolate, so this  one was pretty much made for me. If it were just a tiny bit more creamy, and skipped the rose hips in favor of a few more raspberry bits it would be pretty much perfect from my point of view.

I look forward to trying more of the choco on offer from Dagoba. If you have any particular suggestions, please let me know via the comments.

OK, then. This is one of my favorite ways to consume a bit of chocolate. If you get it just right your taste buds will be writing sonnets in your name.

What you need:

1. A mouth-full sized piece of high quality creamy milk chocolate
2. Some good, strong, reasonably hot espresso

That’s all. The key to this is in the quality of your simple ingredients and in the way you combine them (sounds kind of like the secret to fine Italian cooking, doesn’t it?).

Here are the simple steps on the stairway to taste heaven:

1. Put a piece of the chocolate in your mouth, but don’t eat it yet.
2. Place the choco along the roof of your mouth. Maybe give it a little press with your tongue so it stays there.
3. Take a fair sized sip of the espresso, but don’t swallow it right away.
4. Allow the coffee to melt some of the chocolate.
5. Feel the creamy, rich, melted chocolate flow across your tongue.
6. As the melted chocolate mingles with the espresso, experience the exquisite combination of flavors.
7. Repeat as necessary.

Please give it a try. If you have an opinion on this or if you have any chocolate tricks of your own that you’d like to share, the comment section awaits you.

Hello readers! Welcome to Friends With Chocolate. This site will be my place to ponder, pontificate, extol, ruminate, rant about one of my favorite topics, the Queen of Sweets: chocolate. There’s so much to say about chocolate that I’m not sure where to begin. What is chocolate, really? Where does it come from? How is it made? I will write about may favorite types & brands of chocolate, things that go well with chocolate, health benefits. Maybe even a chocolate recipe or two.

The plan, such as it is, is to write something about chocolate a couple of times each week, but we all know about the best laid plans of mice and men, right? So it’s just a plan, not a promise – I’m sure you all understand. Anyway, “Write about chocolate” will be there on the daily TODO list, right after “Eat some chocolate”. ‘Cause as a wise, anonymous person (or is that “wisely anonymous”) once said:

Put “eat chocolate” at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you’ll get one thing done.

Back soon,

K