Sugar Bloom: Surface moisture, which forms when chocolate is stored in a humid environment, or when it is moved quickly from a very cool environment to a very warm one, causes sugar bloom. The moisture dissolves sugar, and, after evaporating, leaves behind tiny sugar crystals. It feels grainy when touched.
Fat Bloom: If chocolate is improperly tempered, stored in an overly warm environment, or exposed to quick temperature changes, cocoa butter may separate from the chocolate and accumulate on the surface. Known as fat bloom, it feels greasy when touched.
Although both types of bloom are safe to eat, sugar bloom can be really nasty and grainy. Fat bloom can usually be fixed by melting and tempering the chocolate. Both can be avoided by properly storing chocolate.
2. Storage: Store in a cool (60-70° F), dark, dry place away from strong-smelling items such as peppermint or dirty socks. Chocolate has a tendency to absorb other odors. Do not store chocolate in the refrigerator.
3. Antioxidants: Most notably, chocolate is a champion antioxidant. Antioxidants help rid the body of free radicals, nasty little molecules running amok in your body which cause aging and disease. Antioxidants bond to free radicals and whisk them from your body via digestion and other means.
The USDA published a chart of antioxidant foods measured in ORACs (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity Units). For every 100 grams, dark chocolate has 13,120 ORACs, and blueberries have only 2,400.
4. Fat: The fat in dark chocolate is mostly (like 75%) in the form of oleic acid. It's the heart healthy fat found in olive oil, avocados, pecans and other healthier foods. Oleic acid may lower cholesterol and prevent some cancers.
5. Caffeine: There are 95-200 milligrams of caffeine in an 8 ounce cup of regular brewed coffee. There are 9 milligrams of caffeine in a Hershey Milk Chocolate bar and 31 in a Hershey's Special Dark bar. You would have to eat an awful lot of chocolate to use it to wake up in the morning!
6. Theobromine: This is the alkaloid in chocolate that leads to poisoning in domestic animals. Cats and dogs are both sensitive to theobromine, but cats are less likely to eat chocolate. The first signs of this type of poisoning are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and increased urination. Humans, especially the elderly, may be affected by theobromine, but it is rare.
7. Americans spend over $5,000,000,000 on chocolate a year. It's sad considering we don't even make or sell the best chocolate. Think how much more we'd spend if we produced chocolate like the Europeans do.
8. Americans consume 2.8 billion pounds of chocolate per year. That's 11 pounds per person. How are you doing to consume your share?
9. In Alfred Hitchcock's movie Psycho, chocolate syrup was used for the blood in the shower scene.
10. Acne: Over the past two decades, clinical studies have exonerated chocolate as a cause or exacerbating factor in the development or persistence of acne. In fact, many dermatologists doubt that diet plays any significant role in acne. At the University of Missouri, student volunteers with mild to moderate acne each consumed nearly 20 ounces of chocolate over a 48 hour period. Examination of lesions on the fifth day of the test and again on the seventh day showed no new lesions other than those that might be expected based upon the usual variations the subjects had exhibited during several weeks of observation prior to the test. In a research study at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, a group of 65 subjects were fed chocolate bars containing nearly ten times the amount of chocolate liquor as a normal 1.5 oz commercially available chocolate bar. A control group ate a bar that tasted like chocolate, but actually contained no chocolate liquor. At the conclusion of the test, the average acne condition of those eating the chocolate was virtually identical to that of the controls, who had eaten the imitation bars.
11. The First Brownies: The legend is told variously: a chef mistakenly added melted chocolate to a batch of biscuits...a cook was making a cake but didn’t have enough flour. The favorite, cited in Betty Crocker's Baking Classics and John Mariani’s The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, tells of a housewife in Bangor, Maine, who was making a chocolate cake but forgot to add baking powder. When her cake didn’t rise properly, instead of tossing it out, she cut and served the flat pieces. Alas, that theory relies on a cookbook published in Bangor in 1912, six years after the first chocolate brownie recipe was published by one of America’s most famous cookbook authors, Fannie Merritt Farmer, in 1906 (and the Bangor version was almost identical to the 1906 recipe).
12. The First Chocolate Chip Cookies: The first chocolate chip cookies was invented in 1937 by Ruth Graves Wakefield (1905-1977), of Whitman, Massachusetts, who ran the Toll House Restaurant. The Toll House Restaurant site was once a real toll house built in 1709, where stage coach passengers ate a meal while horses were changed and a toll was taken for use of the highway between Boston and New Bedford, a prosperous whaling town. One of Ruth's favorite recipes was an old recipe for "Butter Drop Do" cookies that dated back to colonial times. The recipe called for the use of baker's chocolate. One day Ruth found herself without a needed ingredient. Having a bar of semisweet chocolate on hand, she chopped it into pieces and stirred the chunks of chocolate into the cookie dough. She assumed that the chocolate would melt and spread throughout each cookie. Instead the chocolate bits held their shape and created a sensation. She called her new creation the Toll House Crunch Cookies. The Toll House Crunch Cookies became very popular with guests at the inn, and soon her recipe was published in a Boston newspaper, as well as other papers in the New England area. Word of the cookie spread and it became popular.
13. If you've got melted chocolate all over your hands, you're eating it too slowly.
