10 Commandments Of Awesome Hot Chocolate
1. Use solid chocolate, NOT cocoa powder.
This is the most important thing to do. It’s how you end up with something creamy and beautiful instead of disappointing and gritty and chalky. It’s why the hot chocolate in Europe tastes like love and happiness.
Because you want it to look like this:
Instead of this:
Say no to clumps.
2. The chocolate should be dark chocolate.
Semisweet, bittersweet, or something in between (in terms of % cacao content) will all work. Dark chocolate makes a drink that’s less sugary and more intensely chocolaty than if you use milk chocolate. And if you start dark, you can always adjust the balance by adding milk or sugar until it’s just right.
3. Use about 2 oz. chocolate for every cup of milk.
For a full batch of hot chocolate, that means you’ll use two of these 4-oz. baking bars (the standard size you find at the grocery store) for every 1 quart (4 cups) of milk.
Feel free to play around with the ratio if you want a drink that’s more or less chocolaty.
Via 24/7 Bebenta Sa'yo10 Fascinating Facts About the World of Chocolate
Slavery
Fact: Chocolate farmers are basically slaves.
As we mentioned, many of us enjoy chocolate every day. Unfortunately, we are about to make you feel really guilty about it. Have you ever wondered where your chocolate comes from? Most of it comes from the labor of children, it is believed that in Africa alone, somewhere in the range of 56–72 million children work on chocolate farms. These children are often tricked into working or sold into slavery outright and end up living out their lives working on these farms for the profit of others. The children who have it better live on bananas and corn paste. The unlucky ones are regularly flogged like animals.
One child interviewed said that he was tricked into believing he would be earning money to help his family, but that the closest he gets to compensation are the days he is not beaten with a bicycle chain or the branch from a Cacao tree. The child has never even had occasion to try the food he spends his life slaving away to produce. Some would suggest that we buy Fair Trade, the problem is that Fair Trade does little if anything to help.
Not Really Chocolate
Fact: Many chocolate confections only contain a very small percentage of actual chocolate.
According to Hershey there is no standard in the United States for Dark Chocolate, however, there are standards for Milk Chocolate and Semisweet chocolate. In some countries the standards are different. The UK is said to have slightly higher chocolate contents in most of their confections. In the USA, however, Milk Chocolate only has to contain about ten percent chocolate liquor, whereas Semisweet chocolate has to contain at least thirty-five percent chocolate liquor. Milk chocolate, which has slightly different rules, must contain at least twenty percent Cocoa Butter.
Milk Chocolate
Fact: Milk chocolate is a fairly recent invention.
Dark chocolate has gained popularity in recent years; however, it is still not nearly as popular as the milk variety. We are often exposed to semisweet chocolate when baking delicious cookies, but milk chocolate is still by far the most popular. The interesting thing about it is that milk chocolate wasn’t even invented until 1875. The first European invention in regards to chocolate involved removing about half of the Cocoa Butter, then crushing what remained and mixing it with salts to mitigate the bitter taste, this was known as Dutch Cocoa. Milk chocolate was discovered by taking this powder and mixing it with sweetened condensed milk, which had recently been invented by a man named Nestle. And the rest, as they say, is history.
