Type of chocolate???

[wolf]

I am staying in a hotel which has turn-down service, including the traditional chocolates on the pillow. It's a lovely thing to come back to your room to find after a hard day of conferencing and nibbling at the Concierge Lounge Buffet goodness.

My roommate is diabetic, so it's mine, all mine!!

[Dunlavy]

as my friend would say in this topic: "Dark chocolate? Got Constipation?"

[gingerstar61]

The only chocolate I don't like is white, find it too sickly.

Give me a good old bar of cadbury's though, I've heard people say the chocolate in america is completely different.

[Trilby]

White chocolate is NOT chocolate. At all.

[richlevy]

I did try Mexican chocolate. I found it pretty interesting, but only tried it once. I don't know if it was the same brand shown in the link, but it was in similar wrapping. I liked the idea of breaking the wedges from the disk. They are thicker than candy bars and the chocolate had a higher melting point. A good choice to carry around on a hot day.

Mexican Chocolate
Mexican chocolate is made from dark, bitter chocolate mixed with sugar, cinnamon, and sometimes nuts. The end result is a "grainy" less smooth product. Chocolate is frequently purchased in "disks" although it is also available in bars and syrups.

What is interesting is that chocolate was used as currency. If I remember, 'pieces of eight' were slivers from a roundish coin. I don't know which came first, but it appears that the eight bits of chocolate have the same concept as the chocolate coins I see around Hanukkah.

From Wikipedia

The peso had a nominal value of 8 reales ("royals"). The coins were often physically cut into eight "bits", or sometimes four quarters, to make smaller change. This is the origin of the colloquial name "pieces of eight" for the coin, and of "quarter" and "two bits" for twenty five cents.

Long tied to the lore of piracy, "pieces of eight" were manufactured in the Americas and transported in bulk back to Spain (to pay for wars and various other things), making them a very tempting target for seagoing pirates

And this would make a fine doodad for chocolate lovers.

[gingerstar61]

damn, just reading this thread makes me want chocolate

[dar512]

Originally Posted by Brianna

White chocolate is NOT chocolate. At all.

True. However good white chocolate can be very good, and does taste like a mild chocolate.

Much of what you'll see labeled as white chocolate is actually white coating (fat, sugar and vanilla) and you are correct it has no relationship at all to chocolate. Good white chocolate is made with a healthy portion of cocoa butter. This is still technically not chocolate since it is not made from the solids of the cocoa bean, but is the liquid obtained from the bean.

The result tastes and smells like a mild chocolate. If it doesn't smell like chocolate, then what you have is white coating.

[CzinZumerzet]

Many many years ago - before the 2nd world war - my mother worked at Carson's chocolate factory in Bristol. Carson's used to be famous for their very high quality chocolate liquers (that spelling doesn't sound right..) and they also produced wonderful hand iced chocolate Easter eggs which is what my mum did all year round. When she started work there she was told 'eat as much as you like but you can't take any home with you' and for a day or so she ate it by the handful, then of course stopped. During the war the same factory produced munitions and my mum's department changed from Easter eggs to making tank shells. Her everlasting chocolate favourite is now mine, Walnut Whips, which are not as good as they used to be but the memory lingers. Finger licking yummy.