If ever, as a child, I thought I would like dark chocolate as much as I do today. I remember watching my grandmother eat dark chocolate because she had diabetes, she said she could only eat dark chocolate, and I thought that was the worst punishment of all! Bitter as hell! “Who would ever like that?” It was a lot easier for me to give up on chocolate for the rest of my life than having to eat dark chocolate.

As I grew up and the palate evolved and modified at the same time, my passion for dark chocolate has born, and today I am super fan of this type of chocolate. I no longer think it is the worst thing in the world, on the contrary, I think it is elegant, refined, sophisticated, intense, hard to resist! I usually say that I am in love with cocoa, instead of chocolate, because in fact, that cocoa bitterness is what steals my heart. There is no day when i do not eat raw cocoa nibs, that is, pure and hard cocoa, literally.

I understand who doesn’t like it at all, or who likes it but doesn’t love it, or who likes it but not too much, and that is why 70% cocoa dark chocolate is the most appreciated, because it’s the one who stays between the sweet and the bitter, and most of the people (adults) are very fond to this balance.

Let´s we all going to thank to our dear Mayans for the chocolate we have today? We have already talked about the origin of cocoa in this post of HOT CHOCOLATE, but we talked more about the drink itself and not so much of the cocoa, truth be told, it is not that different, but there are some cute curiosities that are worth to share.

The Mayans and the Aztecs believed that cocoa was a gift from the gods (and we totally understand them), for them cocoa beans were more valuable than gold itself and they even used it as a bargaining chip.

Despite being revered, in the Mayan culture, cocoa was not reserved only for the rich, it was available to everyone and was part of the daily meals in all homes.

However, in the Aztec culture, cocoa was reserved for the richest and most powerful, and only in events such as weddings or other solemn celebrations the poorest could taste it.

Giving a considerable leap in time, it was only at the beginning of the 19th century that the cocoa press was invented, a machine that pressed the cocoa beans separating the fat from the bean and generating a fine powder, cocoa powder. From here it was a revolution in the chocolate industry!

Despite this giant step, cocoa was still mostly used to mix with drinks like milk for example, and the few chocolate bars that existed were still too hard to chew. It was in 1879 that Rudolf Lindt, a Swiss chocolatier, invented a machine that managed to give chocolate a soft consistency that melted in the mouth and that was easily combined with other ingredients.

Milk chocolate, which is still the favorite of the vast majority, was invented by none other than Henry Nestlé, manufacturer of dairy products such as evaporated milk and condensed milk, which after failed attempts by others to put together cocoa and milk to create a sweeter and softer chocolate, he decided to add condensed milk to the cocoa and BOOOM worked really well!

And that´s it, the rest of the story you already know, chocolate has become the craziness that it is today, that few are the ones that don’t like it, and most of them are truly in love with it. There are chocolates of all shapes, sizes, combinations of ingredients, with milk, without milk, there is a whole world around chocolate that moves billions of euros every year. It is a kind of a collective outbreak, because besides the years pass, those in love with chocolate increase proportionally! 😀

The truth is that everything with chocolate is a little better, right?