How did it come to this?
There’s nothing wrong with dark chocolate, let’s just get that out of the way. I have frequently eaten and enjoyed dark chocolate. What I object to, in part, is the moving of goalposts on what constitutes dark chocolate. Ten years ago, if you purchased chocolate containing 60% cocoa mass, it came with warning labels and was invariably and offensively named after an African nation or river. ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO CONSUME OUR AWASH VALLEY BAR, etc. 60% was out there.
And, at 60%, chocolate is pretty good. It’s, whatever, sort of red wine-y and interesting and it’s not sickeningly sweet. I like stuff dipped in it. Swirl it with some peanut butter, everyone’s happy.
But, somewhere along the line, they broke out the 85%, and it’s bullshit. It’s like the trend towards taking all the parts of the animal we’ve been discarding for centuries because they come in contact with fecal matter and taste bad, then presenting them on menus like it’s a brilliant innovation. How long have we been perfecting what we do with cacao? And now we’re supposed to go back to just grinding it between our molars?
I honestly feel that many of us are eating our chocolate 5-10% darker than we would prefer, because we think we should. There’s no shame in enjoying milk chocolate! (Now, Hershey’s is disgusting and tastes like the inside of a robber baron’s wallet, I’m not trying to defend Hershey’s.) If you try to buy ethically-sourced chocolate (because the chocolate industry sometimes makes the diamond industry look like the craft tent at a womyn’s music festival), you will find that your options often start at 72%, which, again, is better than 85% (which is bullshit), but still not as delicious as it would have been if it spent a little time in a vat with a sweetening agent.
And what of white chocolate? IT’S NOT REALLY CHOCOLATE, someone pipes up fatuously. IT DOESN’T CONTAIN COCOA SOLIDS. Well, who gives a shit? It’s divine. We have made-up names for lots of things! Sweetbreads! It’s a fucking calf’s pancreas, but that doesn’t roll as trippingly off the tongue. Maybe you wouldn’t want to eat an entire brick of it, but, hey, if you eat a whole brick of 85% chocolate you will poop yourself to death and not sleep for two days.
Take a feral human who’s been raised in the woods by animals and has no conception of “fancy,” blindfold him (I mean, don’t do this) and offer him a bite of a white chocolate bunny and an 85% bar with salted almonds and see what he wants more of.
Just see.
No, here’s the thing. Sugar’s TERRIBLE for you. But if you’re eating chocolate, just buy what tastes good to you, and ideally is not harvested by actual slaves. If you look within yourself and you genuinely enjoy super-dark chocolate, go on, follow your bliss, weirdo.
PARADOX: Have you ever had 90% chocolate? It’s kind of good. It’s like it circles back around and you’re so amazed that it exists and hasn’t plunged the Earth into the sun that you can roll it around in your mouth and taste eternity.
Tags: 85% is too dark, chocolate, food, freedom
Thank God they have Cadbury’s available here, because you are 100% correct about Hershey’s. Oddly enough, Hershey’s syrup is great, but it’s so bizarre that America’s main chocolate is so awful. Relatedly, there is no decent plain white chocolate in America, apparently, so when the urge comes upon me about once a year I usually have to settle for Hershey’s cookies & cream chocolate.
Yes. Hershey’s literally tastes like vomit to me.
The reason Hershey’s tastes like that is because it’s made with sour milk. I read that they didn’t use to have the technology to keep the milk fresh, and everybody got used to the milk chocolate tasting sour. Then when they figured out how to keep the milk fresh, people complained that the chocolate didn’t taste right, so they started to sour the milk on purpose. That’s why Hershey’s tastes like sour clay, and why I give it a pass.
Milky Bar milk and cookies is my personal jam.
AMEN. I will eat my sugary sweet milk and white chocolate and I will eat it WITHOUT SHAME.
I like my chocolate like I like my humor, dark and bitter. But you’re right – there are limits to how much cacao one person can take.
That fatuously piping person is right, though – white chocolate isn’t really chocolate, but a GIANT CARDBOARD LIE foisted on us by candy companies.
Then it is a delicious, delicious lie.
Cacao to Cacao!
Especially the Ritter Sport white chocolate with hazelnuts. MMMMMMMM.
White chocolate, you tricksy mistress. I’m at the store staring down the baking chocolate section and I see “white baking chips” and other such nonsense. HOW THE HELL DO I KNOW WHAT THAT IS, that tells me NOTHING.
And then I give up and get a bag of Ghirardelli choco chips and run home.
ps Trader Joe’s chocolate chips are the best ever and I will fight anyone who says otherwise [without sending me samples, for proof]
Agreed on the chocolate chips. I usually bring 4-5 bags back to the UK everytime I go home.
ALSO: Trader’s Joe’s PoundPlus milk chocolate is my happiness, my savior, my love (I believe it is made by Callebaut)
GREAT. Now I have to stop at TJ’s on the way home. Do I look like I have time for this? You do realize it’s, like, 17 minutes out of my way, right?
But you’ve given me no choice. Tyrants.
I refuse to apologize. Accept your delicious fate.
The answer, as always, is butterscotch chips.
I like Hersheys, but I suspect it’s a novelty thing, being in the UK. I can eat Kisses by the bucketload.
I am a bit of a sucker for novelty chocolate (and any kind of novelty food really) but the snobbery over dark chocolate passes me by. I love the Montezumas range – apple crumble, eton mess, white with lemon and sour cherry, orange and geranium, lime and sea salt – and also all fair trade. http://www.montezumas.co.uk/index.html
shout out to the UK’s Terry’s Chocolate Orange though those things are great! even the dark one.
My favourite is the popping candy one. Or possibly the honeycomb one.
CHOCOLATE ORANGES. The ones that are actually orange shaped, right? And you thwack them down on the counter in a most satisfying manner?
Those things are the shit. I want one now.
There are two in the cupboard of joy. Catch! :flings chocolate orange:
Eeep!
Can I move into the Cupboard of Joy? I don’t take up much space and will be happy to provide several pounds of sprinkles.
I’ll clear you a space on the top shelf, you can pass me the stuff I can’t reach.
Fabulous. I’ll be packing up my snacks.
Chocolate oranges are the best! They make a raspberry one too, which is almost as good. Almost.
WHAT!? Raspberry? WHERE?
the dark and the milk are best. there’s a mint one which is just…no. orange shaped but minty? i think not. that’s why matchmakers exist.
Kisses are okay, but the plain Hershey bar isn’t really any good, except in the context of a S’more.
The only Kisses I will eat are the ones with caramel in them, because it takes away from the pukey flavor of the chocolate.
Yes! How does the kiss shape make the taste tolerable?
Witchcraft?
okay on the white chocolate but if you try to defend Nescafe next, all hell breaks loose
Are you talking Nescafe 3 in 1 instant coffee packets? Those are heaven.
Hershey’s is sometimes good in a gross kind of way, but not even childhood nostalgia can make me enthusiastic about Palmer’s (aka the sweet brown glue all your Easter bunnies were made of).
But you aren’t a fan of the way it manages to absorb the taste of the metallic wrapper?
Hershey’s is fine, it’s Nestle that’s offensive garbage not fit to be called chocolate!
I disagree. I think Nestle is the lesser of the two evils.
YES Nicole! This badly needed to be said.
If you’re Europe-side, Bournville is the best dark chocolate. It’s not bullshit dark, and it’s still sweet as hell. See also, Lidl’s dark chocolate, which I bought the other day and they seem to have rebranded it to just ‘chocolate’ as opposed to the milk chocolate and the dark (bullshit) chocolate. The one with whole hazelnuts in is my jam.
i dunno. bourneville is really quite sweet (and a bit waxy to my tongue! but that might be a problem with me). Lindt is better, imo, but the bars are TOO SMALL AND FLAT.
i like bourneville for baking though. takes me back to being a wee un.
No no everyone eat the 85% dark stuff it’s healthy and so much more refined and all kinds of delicious really.
:squirrels away Tcho Milk Chocolate bars:
What if you just want to kind of keep eating M&Ms and maybe Buncha Crunch here and there? Do I have to choose sides?
No. As much as I love the dark ‘n’ bitter stuff, I’ll still happily grab the mini Hershey’s with almonds from my office administrator’s desk. Every kind of chocolate for everyone! (Except that white crap.)
HECK YES.
I love me some milk and white chocolate. Milk chocolate + caramel + marshmellow = flavor perfection. I also love vanilla flavored things and have a strong sweet tooth so I’m sure that has something to do with it. And honestly white chocolate is the only chocolate to pair with fruit if you ask me.
Also if you are a white chocolate favoring person, Valrhona has created Dulcey which is a caramelized white chocolate and it’s pretty delicious tbh. I really wanna make pumpkin oatmeal cookies with chopped up dulcey bits because I bet that would be amazing. I’ve seen Dulcey online and in the cheese section at Whole Foods, which is cool because it was portioned out for individual sale rather than having to spending $20 on a whole bag.
I’m sorry, did you say CARAMELIZED WHITE CHOCOLATE?
I must get it immediately. I feel like it will ruin my life. But I must have it.
Yeah! It’s pretty wonderful. 🙂 http://www.valrhona-chocolate.com/dulcey-feves
true white chocolate should contain cocoa BUTTER, but these days, most of it doesn’t, and is (in big letters) WHITE CHOCOLATE (small tiny print) flavored.
Wait ok, is there anywhere to buy non-child-slave chocolate that is also below 72% cocoa? Because all the fancy food websites I go to with the fancy $10 ethically-sourced chocolates are all at least 72%, most 75%, or if they’re lower they’re flavored with like, salt and chipotle and guys I just want a chocolate bar.
https://www.chocolove.com/almonds-and-sea-salt-in…
These are ethically sourced, I believe. And it’s only 55% and it’s delicious.
Divine Chocolate! Also the bars there cost like, $2-$4.
Appropriately named because that’s how it tastes. It’s wonderful and smooth. I’ve only had the dark but I’m sure their milk chocolate is good too.
Theo Chocolate based out of Seattle! (I may have gone on the factory tour multiple times when I lived there to stuff my face full of chocolate???) They have a lot of dark varieties but they have plain milk bars too, and it’s ethically produced. https://www.theochocolate.com/chocolate-bars/clas… I think they sell at some Whole Foods but they also ship, and seriously it’s the best chocolate I’ve ever had.
oh, there’s gotta be! I work in a health food place and we definitely have a few ethical brands that have their own milk chocolate. cocoa camino comes to mind – they make nice stuff!
Hershey’s is brown plastic, but oddly the ONLY acceptable chocolate to use when you are making proper campfire s’mores. Good chocolate just doesn’t taste right if you are sitting next to a fire and eating melty goodness.
Have you tried Nutella s’mores? (Warning: bring napkins)
I have! And they are great! But I have never had them next to an actual campfire (only on those portable roasty things some restaurants have that you can use for dessert), so cannot make an apples to apples comparison!
My friend brought Reese’s peanut butter cups to make smores on our last camping trip and it was great. Napkins are also necessary though.
Cadbury Dairy milk tastes pretty good (imo) but it’s not as flat as Hershey’s bar so it is a bit tricky to do the balancing part!
Yes – Dairy Milk bars also taste 10000% better than Hershey bars if you’re going to eat them alone, but the blocky bits are tough to s’more properly. If they made totally flat ones, I MIGHT be a convert on the s’more front.
But yes, in real life, those are the only pure milk chocolate bars I eat, because yum.
This is my favorite chocolate bar to date and if you all haven’t found Divine Chocolate yet, you should. It’s also Fair Trade, which is awesome.
I will also eat Hershey’s and other chocolate in a pinch because my palate isn’t that discriminating, but I do try to go towards inexpensive fair trade chocolate when given the chance.
That looks AMAZING. We do get divine over here, I will be keeping a particular eye out for this!
I really love all the German milk chocolate brands because their advertising is so delightful. “It’s healthy for your kids because there’s milk in it!” Yes, Kinder, yes, Milka. Now get in my mouth.
But why *is* the Milka cow lilac?
OMG I just found out apparently Kinder Surprise eggs are BANNED in the US and not just unavailable? So the BBs are going to have to gorge on them on visits to Oz, or we’ll have to run up to Canada (after they turn three, because Mama don’t play with choking hazard age)
At least a few years ago, they were definitely available in at least one grocery store in Queens, NY, so I don’t know about the banned part. Although I also wouldn’t put it past that store to have illicit groceries….
You can sometimes find them, usually at a small shop or a convenience store run by folks with connections to countries where they’re sold. I used to work at a shop where one of the owners smuggled them from Europe in his suitcase.
I can totes get thee a care package of kinder surprises in ~6 months when the bb’s are old enough if you want.
I can be your Australian Sugar Mama (willing to send Aussie chocolate for grownups, too – how about some haigh’s? Chocolate covered macadamias?)
I’m so bummed they only have plain small blocks of Cadbury’s here – no Furry Friends! Chocolate doesn’t travel well, unfortunately, I usually ask Australians to bring me Milko lollies or similar unmelting foodstuffs. They do have Tim Tams for a few months every year at Target (and Creme Eggs at Easter), so that helps 😉
You can get them! I’ve definitely seen them in convenience stores in my neighborhood (which is in the US). Also some grocery stores (and not specialty stores either). They might not be everywhere yet though, like how Magnum ice cream bars aren’t everywhere yet.
Ugh, anti-white-chocolate people. White chocolate contains cocoa butter, which is the priciest and most temperamental part of chocolate, so you’d think food snobs would be all about it.
(And also it’s delicious, and versatile, but then I haven’t really met a chocolate I didn’t like or couldn’t find a use for.)
Uses: put in your mouth. Put on something that will go in your mouth. Put on something that will go in your mouth. Use to decorate something that will go in your mouth.Snaffle.
Had me an 85% bar–it stained my mouth and tasted like engine sludge, only with a smooth after glow.
My mother’s side of the family is Belgian, so I am obligated to have Opinions on chocolate. I don’t like milk chocolate personally, but I agree that it is an acceptable chocolate BUT why are all the exciting flavoured stuff milk chocolate? Why is it so hard to find dark chocolate with entertaining fillings without buying it from a fancy chocolate store? Why do people insist on taking almost- too-sweet-to-eat milk chocolateand filling it with super-sweet fillings? You need a bitter dark chocolate to go with your sugary fillings!
Don’t get me started on white chocolate. Just don’t.
YES I am with you 100%. I don’t want to be limited to dark chocolate-covered cherries! Assortments never have enough dark, and it seems like half of them have coconut in them (ew). Dark chocolate is SO GOOD with raspberry, orange, caramel, maple, or that chewy molasses stuff.
Caramel filled milk chocolate. Because I DO want my teeth to feel like they are going to fall out when I eat my chocolate.
But we’re not allowed to eat food unless everything enjoyable has been suctioned out of it and replaced with putative health benefits! (I personally only eat 85% cacao or greater varieties of chocolate, and only if it’s been carefully painted onto leaves of heirloom kale by my local artisanal harvest co-op.)
I had always thought Sweetbreads were thymus glands but a quick wiki check says that Sweetbreads is a catch all term for all sorts of ‘edible’ body parts. Mind blown.
Sorry, my pedant is showing.
Oh. All the chocolate, all the time, forever and ever. Eat whatever variety you enjoy.
Milk chocolate is inedibly sweet, and I say that as someone who ate a pain au chocolat AND a slice of chocolate for breakfast this very morning. I mean it’s fine enough coating a Milky Way, but I seriously can’t choke it down plain. And my objections to white chocolate aren’t in the name, they’re in the nasty taste.
I really like the really high % chocolate, I dunno why. But I will pretty much eat anything that has the word “chocolate” in it. White, dark, milk (though only the fancy kinds of milk chocolate, I find the cheap stuff is mostly corn syrup and you can tell).
So if anyone has any dark chocolate they don’t want to eat, I’ll take it, is what I’m saying.
Yeah, I can eat any dark chocolate (except Hershey’s, which has no flavor), but if it’s milk it has to be the fancy stuff.
I’m with you! I think it has to do with my declining sweet tooth in general (do not even try to give me caramel-flavoured anything), but also maybe with the time I ate baking chocolate as a kid?
me too! i actually really enjoy the 85% lindt stuff. i love it hard. we’re kinda lucky in the UK that we get so many european chcolates without much effort.
Lindt 99% though is hard work. it’s like eating earth. and the squares are so small!
(that’s not a rehash of the terriblefood/smallportions crack, but it sort of is)
Mr. Theory had a friend visiting recently, and she asked if we had any chocolate.
“Yes! Here you go. *hands over a 65% cocoa jobbie*”
“This has … lemon rinds in it. Lemons and… pink peppercorns?”
“Oh! You don’t like that? Okay, here’s a different one.”
“Um. This one? Also has lemons in it. And salt. Lemons and salt. Do you have any chocolate without lemons in it?”
“I… guess not.”
SORRY I’M PART OF THE PROBLEM.
I don’t really like lemon, but along with the chocolate orange in the cupboard of joy is white chocolate with strawberry and black pepper, marmite chocolate, daim bar milka, dairy milk with popping candy, jelly tots and smarties embedded in it, maple fudge, cookies and cream chocolate, and many more… I cannot resist novelty confectionery.
Um, all of that chocolate sounds amazing, what is wrong with your friend!?
My friend made a chocolate chip cookie recipe and used 85% coco and he was so proud- he’s all,” I got the super dark, they didn’t have 90% but oh well, and I hand chopped it myself”, and none of us had the heart to tell him that those damn cookies went right into the garbage as soon as he left the room. It had a baking soda flavor- a bad grainy unsweetened vibe.
Semisweet is where it’s at buddy. I like a middle chocolate- 60-70%
In addition to TJ’S PoundPlus, See’s “dark” chocolate (I think it’s like 60%) is something I like to fantasize about being buried alive in, and eating my way out.
However, I must draw my red line at citrus and chocolate. People have tried to foist Jaffa cakes and chocolate oranges on me, as well as all manner of horror-inducing citrus and chocolate concoctions, but no. Keep your orange liqueur truffles, your LEMON-PEPPERCORN CHOCOLATE MOLLYCULETHEORY. you can find me here in my corner, eating my low % dark chocolate with nuts and peanut brittle.
I will eat your lemon peppercorn chocolate. Please let me.
Please rid the world of it, in any way you see fit*
*As an aside, how glorious would it be to be charged with eating the world’s supply of a type of chocolate you like? Probably better odds of eating all before you die with a smaller-batch company. Hershey’s might be a hair ambitious for the task, but I don’t want to quash any dreams.
More for me!
Oh thank god I still have some M&Ms in my desk drawer.
Just saying that sturdy workaday milk chocolate is proven to very quickly combat the effects of dementors, so we know it’s good.
If Prof. Remus Lupin says it, I believe it.
Endangered Species 88% FTW! It’s got a panther on the label SO YOU KNOW IT’S GOOD!
I love all varieties of chocolate, from white to 90%. I usually buy something in the 75-80% range, because then it’s harder to eat the whole thing all at once, and that way later I can still have some, because I haven’t eaten it all yet.
Related: Last year I made a chocolate cake with milk chocolate ganache, instead of the standard dark chocolate, and everyone at the party went insane. Everyone loves milk chocolate, it turns out.
White chocolate is gross and tastes like extruded plastic, 85% is fine if you are drinking whisky or just want a dark chocolate. 90% is too much. Cadbury’s is for babies. Will we ever agree about inconsequential things, Nicole? Probably not.
I don’t like chocolate that’s too sweet, but I always want the dark chocolate to be creamier. Like when you dress up a cup of strong black tea with a generous sploosh of whole milk: it’s not sweet, just more luxurious (and easier on the stomach). Is that so wrong?
I just had a piece of Godiva supposedly 80% chocolate, but it was so sugary that I couldn’t eat it. I had a bite, and thought, eek. “Midnight Swirl” it was called. Creamy, unctuous, yes. But too darn sweet.
Ah, thankyou, I can see the link now I am looking at it! :idiot:
My favorite was always Cote D’Or’s thick slab of dark chocolate. I don’t know the percentage, but it was rich and bitter and perfect with a fresh baguette. It was before they started the percentage war, anyway. Back in the days when that constituted an early lunch for me. (Of course, I had to totally and severely detox a few years later, but I’ll always remember that time fondly.) Cote D’Or. Yum. Or, properly spelled: Côte D’Or.
Get some and a baguette from a real “boungerie” (not the boulanger or the patisserie: has to say “boulangerie”) next time you’re in Paris for the full experience. Sit on a bench on the Seine and enjoy.
I do endorse those old little chocolates called “Ice Cubes,” though. They are AMAZING. Hard to find, but heavenly.
Also, a good hot chocolate soothes a sore throat, I find. I always go straight to either the Waffels und Dinge cart, or Godiva for one, they’re very thick. Always works for me.
Okay, this is old news I see but I have feelings which must be expressed.
It's TRAGIC. I had a source that was still ordering them from Germany last winter but they don't get new ones over the summer to avoid melting in transit. I went last week and there were none. Last winter they were merry about flouting the law but this time the owner was shifty about it and looked over her shoulder before pointing out the Russian surprise eggs. "The FDA hasn't caught up to them. Yet," she said portentously. Then she said it was just like when they started requiring child safety locks on lighters.