Well, You Guys Were Right

[destrekor]

100% cocoa powder on your tongue is the best

oh god no

cocoa powder just isn't the same as chocolate, it's missing a lot of crucial components of the cacao bean that make cacao so awesome.

I keep meaning to order some roasted cacao nibs yet I continue to forget to do that.

Especially dutch-process cocoa powder. (hershey) I used to like it, as it was pretty much the only chocolate I had growing up. I have since experienced the finer qualities of chocolate, and I cannot tolerate what Hershey does to the stuff. Plus, I need higher percentages of cacao. 70+% cacao solids = :awe:

 

[WelshBloke]

heh.

as far as un-chocolate Hershey's products go, white chocolate, in general, is worse. There is no such thing as "white chocolate." it is basically the corn syrup & food coloring product that Hershey's and others have always been passing off as "chocolate," only with some vanilla flavor, iirc.

There exists no "white chocolate" product that has ever been actual cacao. i/e.: chocolate.

Decent white chocolate is made with cocoa butter and doesn't have corn syrup in it or food colouring.

 

[Newbian]

White chocolate has always reminded me of sweetened soap. D:

Stop saying nasty words and you won't be forced to eat soap.

 

[JEDIYoda]

What sucks is the American version of Cadbury chocolate tastes like ass....

You must be a person who have tried it all...
Please tell us how ASS tastes...............

 

[PsiStar]

Well, you wouldn't want to eat chocolate that is made for cooking but I love dark chocolate. There are some very good dark chocolate bars sold at Trader Joes.

ditto that

Dark chocolate is an acquired taste. 95% cocoa would be a bit strong for a 1st try. Now i prefer 90% to even 100% cocoa bars. 70% is almost too sweet, but I keep it handy for just those times when some extra sweetness is good.

I also have a daughter allergic to soy products. Try finding any chocolate w/o soy something. A real bummer in December when it is time to make fudge, BUT not if you use 100% cocoa bars. The soy products disappear somewhere around 70%.

The dark chocolate is especially good with red wine.

 

[destrekor]

ditto that

Dark chocolate is an acquired taste. 95% cocoa would be a bit strong for a 1st try. Now i prefer 90% to even 100% cocoa bars. 70% is almost too sweet, but I keep it handy for just those times when some extra sweetness is good.

I also have a daughter allergic to soy products. Try finding any chocolate w/o soy something. A real bummer in December when it is time to make fudge, BUT not if you use 100% cocoa bars. The soy products disappear somewhere around 70%.

The dark chocolate is especially good with red wine.

Just so you know, soy is present in chocolate not to cheapen it, but as an emulsifier iirc, something that is critical to ensure you get the chocolate feel (and thus taste) we have all come to expect all this time.
And soy lecithin is still present even at higher concentrations, at least the ones I've seen. Haven't bought anything above 80% (or perhaps I had an 85% somewhat recently) in a long while, as I either had a lesser-quality bar or I just don't prefer it at that high of percentage, so I'm not entirely sure. I have looked at the labels of higher bars though and do recall seeing it (I look at far more labels of things than I really ought to, I'm almost too interested in all that information.

 

[zinfamous]

Decent white chocolate is made with cocoa butter and doesn't have corn syrup in it or food colouring.

Cocoa butter is the major ingredient in the commercial production of both white chocolate and milk chocolate. This application continues to dominate consumption of cocoa butter.
Pharmaceutical companies exploit cocoa butter's physical properties. As a nontoxic solid at room temperature that melts at body temperature, it is considered an ideal base for medicinal suppositories.

Hmmm, suppository candy.

 

[hclarkjr]

here is the reason hershey is going down hill http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2007-02-15-hershey-cuts_x.htm funny the taste changes after moving some to mexico

 

[MarkXIX]

Try this:

http://www.ritter-sport.us/#/en_US/treadmill/

My local Target carries them in the candy aisle and in limited selection at the front registers.

 

[pmv]

American chocolate (which usually means Hersheys) is, and always has been, horrible. Far, far too much sugar. Horrible texture. Nasty stuff.

However, as a Brit, its impossible to point that out on any international forum without a continental European popping up to point out how bad British chocolate is compared to Belgian, Swiss, French...whatever.

British chocolate isn't even chocolate, by the standards of those Continentals, becuase it uses vegetable fat instead of milk fat. Apparently.

But I still maintain that while British vs Continental chocolate is a matter of individual taste and what you are used to (and yeah, the Euro stuff probably is much nicer for small quantitites, but in my experience it gets sickly quite quickly, you can't eat that much of it at a time - though givne how fattening it is that might be a good thing), Hershey's is objectively nasty..

In fact, Americans seem to put too much sugar in many things...breakfast cereals, chocolate, yoghurt...the US version always has far more sugar in it than other countries versions.

 

[destrekor]

Decent white chocolate is made with cocoa butter and doesn't have corn syrup in it or food colouring.

To be called white chocolate, and not white chocolate flavored, it must have a certain percentage of cocoa butter. This is regulated by every government's FDA equivalent.

Just like half the candy out there can no longer be said to have a chocolate coating, but rather, "chocolate flavor."

Cocoa powder, on the other hand, is basically what is left once you take the cocoa butter for the white chocolate.
I think there would still be some fatty components, but ultimately cocoa powder is the remains of the cacao bean once all fats have been removed.
And then dutch-process cocoa powder is even worse as it no longer has a few of the best properties of chocolate, all in the name of being "less bitter and smoother", which makes no sense imho, as it takes away the flavor and sense notes I get when eating good chocolate. Worse, it also strips away almost all of the antioxidants, and cacao is super rich in beneficial antioxidants. That's half the reason I love intense dark chocolate, and why I want cacao nibs to snack on, because the more of it that is in the product makes it healthier, so if I'm going to get all that saturated fat and the sugar (if eating a bar or whatnot, versus raw) I at least want the good chemicals and the antioxidants.

 

[destrekor]

American chocolate (which usually means Hersheys) is, and always has been, horrible. Far, far too much sugar. Horrible texture. Nasty stuff.

However, as a Brit, its impossible to point that out on any international forum without a continental European popping up to point out how bad British chocolate is compared to Belgian, Swiss, French...whatever.

British chocolate isn't even chocolate, by the standards of those Continentals, becuase it uses vegetable fat instead of milk fat. Apparently.

But I still maintain that while British vs Continental chocolate is a matter of individual taste and what you are used to (and yeah, the Euro stuff probably is much nicer for small quantitites, but in my experience it gets sickly quite quickly, you can't eat that much of it at a time - though givne how fattening it is that might be a good thing), Hershey's is objectively nasty..

In fact, Americans seem to put too much sugar in many things...breakfast cereals, chocolate, yoghurt...the US version always has far more sugar in it than other countries versions.

Damn if that's the case, I wish that'd quit putting all this damn sugar in everything. I am trying to consume as little sugar as possible... that is, if I can stay disciplined.

And vegetable fats of any kind do NOT belong in chocolate. As an American that hates Hershey and all the other North American candy companies for ruining chocolate, I will stand by the rest of Europe on this matter and assert your country is almost as wrong as ours is when it comes to chocolate. To be honest, I've never had it I don't think, and it's either I never see it, I'm never interested in it when I see it, or I've had it and it sucked.
All the chocolate I've liked tends to be Euro-imported or Euro-brand that's probably mass-made somewhere in North America.

 

[Newbian]

Hmmm, suppository candy.

Sweet going up but not so sweet coming out.

 

[oppie1]

In different threads on chocolate, Hershey gets bashed a lot. I always liked their bars, and while they weren't the best, I thought they were a decent bar, at a decent price. I figured those bitching were expecting Porsche performance on a Kia budget.

Well, it's been a long time since I had a Hershey bar, and I got a bunch for Xmas. Damn the quality's slipped on these. They taste like the budget chocolate I used to get as kid for Easter. Sweet, waxy, and little chocolate taste. The ones with the almonds are only edible because of the almonds. I'm not sure I'll be able to force the plain "chocolate" bars down.

Way to ruin the name of a good company guys...

i live right near Hershey... and while the quality of their chocolates has slipped, the factories sure do make the town smell good... especially on peanut roasting day

 

[destrekor]

Hmmm, suppository candy.

There are a whole lot of crazy applications for things we wouldn't ordinarily think about.
Some are even stranger, like the things we actually eat all the time and accept without question, all the while most people are probably thankful they don't know the juicy details. :biggrin:

 

[destrekor]

i live right near Hershey... and while the quality of their chocolates has slipped, the factories sure do make the town smell good... especially on peanut roasting day

Yeah I know a girl who says she could smell it downwind on some especially windy days, and that it smelled amazing. I could easily imagine, and am envious.

Manufacturing/Industrial/Blue-collar towns don't tend to smell very pretty. Toledo, for the most part, avoids the worst smells, but isn't a pleasant city by any stretch of the imagination. Except for the old General Mills cereal plant down the road, there wasn't any pleasant smells in the city. Worse, I work next to a damn dump. Thankfully it's rare to smell it in our little corner of the area.

 

[destrekor]

Sweet going up but not so sweet coming out.

Gives a new meaning to Hershey's Squirts.
:biggrin:

 

[Howard]

Yeah I know a girl who says she could smell it downwind on some especially windy days, and that it smelled amazing. I could easily imagine, and am envious.

Manufacturing/Industrial/Blue-collar towns don't tend to smell very pretty. Toledo, for the most part, avoids the worst smells, but isn't a pleasant city by any stretch of the imagination. Except for the old General Mills cereal plant down the road, there wasn't any pleasant smells in the city. Worse, I work next to a damn dump. Thankfully it's rare to smell it in our little corner of the area.

People who actually work in a chocolate plant hate the smell.

 

[Newbian]

Gives a new meaning to Hershey's Squirts.
:biggrin:

D:

 

[jhansman]

Even the "best" milk chocolate cannot hold a candle to dark. Once you've had the real thing, milk chocolate will always run a distant second.

 

[destrekor]

People who actually work in a chocolate plant hate the smell.

People who constantly work on/with anything that smells good almost always inevitably grow to loathe anything with even a hint of that smell, or even flavor.

 

[Colt45]

I don't know why anyone eats that shit. 80% Sugar, 5% milk solids, 15% grease, and trace amounts of cocoa.

Getting a half portion of real chocolate for the same price is a bargain, really.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Now I want some chocolate. Darn you guys.

 

[grrl]

Hershey's has always been pretty bad.