Posts Tagged ‘chocolate’

Dark Chocolate

According to a recent study, eating a little dark chocolate every day could be good for you. Research at Johns Hopkins University in the USA found that cocoa beans have a similar biochemical effect to aspirin in reducing the likelihood of blood clots.

The scientists estimate that eating a little dark chocolate every day could halve the risk of a heart attack. However, what they don’t emphasize is that eating a lot of chocolate is actually bad for your heart, because even dark chocolate is jam-packed full of sugar and animal fats.

In the meantime why don’t you try making this lovely chocolate cake recipe;

CHOCOLATE CAKE, OR DEVIL’S FOOD
5 level tablespoonfuls of butter,
1?1/4 cups of sugar,
3?1/2 squares of Baker’s Chocolate, (melted),
3 eggs,
1 teaspoonful of vanilla,
3/4 a cup of milk,
3?1/2 level teaspoonfuls of baking powder,
1?1/2 cups of sifted pastry flour.

Cream the butter, add sugar and chocolate, then the unbeaten eggs and
vanilla, and beat together until very smooth. Sift the baking powder with
one?half a cup of the flour, and use first; then alternate the milk and the
remaining flour, and make the mixture stiff enough to drop from the spoon.
Beat until very smooth and bake in loaf in moderate oven.

Enjoy!

SOURCE: 101 Facts You Should Know About Food

chocolates

Chocolate is almost unique as a food in that it is solid at normal room temperatures yet melts easily within the mouth. This is because the main fat in it, which is called cocoa butter, is essentially solid at temperatures below 25 1C when it holds all the solid sugar and cocoa particles together. This fat is, however, almost entirely liquid at body temperature, enabling the particles to flow past one another, so the chocolate becomes a smooth liquid when it is heated in the mouth. Chocolate also has a sweet taste that is attractive to most people. Strangely chocolate began as a rather astringent, fatty and unpleasant tasting drink and the fact that it was developed at all, is one of the mysteries of history.

The first known cocoa plantations were established by the Maya in the lowlands of south Yucatan about 600 AD. Cocoa trees were being grown by the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru when the Europeans discovered central America. The beans were highly prized and used as money as well as to produce a drink known as chocolatl. The beans were roasted in earthenware pots and crushed between stones, sometimes using decorated heated tables and mill stones. They could then be kneaded into cakes, which could be added to cold water to make a drink. Vanilla, spices or honey were often added and the drink whipped to make it frothy. The Aztec Emperor Montezeuma was said to have drunk 50 jars of this beverage per day.

Christopher Columbus bought back some cocoa beans to Europe as a curiosity, but it was only after the Spaniards conquered Mexico that Don Cortez introduced the drink to Spain in the 1520s. Here sugar was added to overcome some of the bitter, astringent flavours, but the drink remained virtually unknown in the rest of Europe for almost a hundred years, coming to Italy in 1606 and  France in 1657. It was very expensive and, being a drink for the aristocracy, its spread was often through connections between powerful families. For example, the Spanish princess Anna of Austria introduced it to her husband King Louis XIII of France and the French court in about 1615. Here Cardinal Richelieu enjoyed it both as a drink and to aid his digestion. Its flavour was not liked by everyone and one Pope in fact declared that it could be drunk during a fast, because its taste was so bad.

The first chocolate drinking was established in London in 1657 and it was mentioned in Pepys’ Diary of 1664 where he wrote that ‘‘jocolatte’’ was ‘‘very good’’. In 1727 milk was being added to the drink. This invention is generally attributed to Nicholas Sanders. During the eighteenth century, White’s Chocolate House became the fashionable place for young Londoners, while politicians of the day went to the Cocoa Tree Chocolate House. These were much less rowdy than the taverns of the period. It remained however, very much a drink for the wealthy.

One problem with the chocolate drink was that it was very fatty. Over half of the cocoa bean is made up of cocoa butter. This will melt in hot water making the cocoa particles hard to disperse as well as looking unpleasant, because of fat coming to the surface. The Dutch, however, found a way of improving the drink by removing part of this fat. In 1828 Van Houten developed the cocoa press. This was quite remarkable, as his entire factory was manually operated at the time. The cocoa bean cotyledons (known as cocoa nibs) were pressed to produce a hard ‘‘cake’’ with about half the fat removed. This was milled into a powder, which could be used to produce a much less fatty drink. In order to make this powder disperse better in the hot water or milk, the Dutch treated the cocoa beans during the roasting process with an alkali liquid. This has subsequently become known as the Dutching process. By changing the type of alkalising agent, it also became possible to adjust the colour of the cocoa powder.

Source :The Science of Chocolate, 2nd. edition, Stephen Beckett