Some consumers are looking for foods that are lower in fat and sugar. Candy makers are looking past the ingredients and are searching for new technologies and ideas that can help make candy more healthy.
To make chocolates and candy healthier, the confectionery manufacturers are adding fruit pieces, real fruit juices (with no added sugar), vitamin additives, and making more premium dark chocolates.
You’re hungry for a sweet treat, you make a choice and hand the cashier a dollar and habitually hold out your hand for the change; but to your surprise the cashier places candy in your hand. You could receive a Jolly Rancher, chocolates or M & Ms instead of your change??
Not yet in the United States, but in Argentina, Paraguay and Indonesia they have adopted a socially acceptable solution when vendors don’t have the correct change, to give you chocolates or candy as acceptable currency.
But problems do arise with this practice. When some try to pay for foods with a “wallet full of candy or chocolates!!!!”
Do You Know?
Couverture - cocoa beans transformed into bars of chocolate, or the quality coating used for making chocolate covered confections.
Chocolatier - one who creates confections from chocolate. Different from chocolate makers who create fancy chocolates, such as bonbons and truffles from cocoa beans and other ingredients.
Ganache - cream and chocolate, melted slowly and lovingly together.
Roasting the beans - this needs to be done at the right temperature for the right amount of time.
Winnowing - breaking the cocoa beans into small pieces called nibs and removing the shells.
Conching - in large vats called conchs, with very forceful kneading the cocoa beans are ground into nibs, usually with sugar, to form a chocolate paste, to the desired smoothness and to develop the flavors. The conching process reduces the moistness of cocoa mass and removes the volatile acids; in other words raw unprocessed chocolate is not ready to eat, because it is to gritty. To make it smooth, liquid and rich it is rolled and kneaded, at the right temperature. The process was invented in 1879.
Hedonistic sensation of eating chocolate - how it melts in the mouth, the sheer joy, delight, the pleasure of the senses and pleasant consequences when it starts to break apart and the way the rich flavors and sugars are released.
Additives - depending on the final desired outcome certain ingredients might be added; vanilla, more cocoa butter and or soy lecithin.
Tempered - the process of heating the chocolate and then cooling it to a certain temperature, so that it has beautiful sheen and suitable snap.
Enjoy!!
Chocolate is the leader of a growing “mood food” category.
A report warns that the market including foods that make people feel happy might be a “passing fad”.
I don’t think chocolate since chocolate has been around for so many years could be a “fad!!”
Gourmet and natural foods are leading in U.S. food and beverage markets. This includes gourmet chocolate. This growth is expected to continue through 2012.
