Friday, April 22, 2011

Chocolate Doesn't Come from Cows

.... I know, crazy, right?? 
I was standing just to the side of the checkout at a grocery store the other day, carefully reading each and every label on the chocolate bars... since they hide milk in EVERYTHING... and when I had finally found two chocolate bars with no dairy at all (a cranberry-almond one and a raspberry one), I actually got into the check-out line to pay. Now unbeknownst to me, the check-out lady had been watching me the whole time, and said rather peppily.. and almost a bit mockingly (it could have been that I was already on edge just because of the day I'd had up to that point)... "Tough decision, huh??". I looked at her and replied, "Yea, I can't eat dairy, so I have to read all the labels first." "Oh", she said. Pause. "They can make chocolate without milk in it?? Really?" 

So I'd like to dispel a commonly-held belief.....chocolate doesn't come from cows. 

It comes from the cacao tree (cocoa beans) and is processed to create chocolate liquor, which can be further processed to produce cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Maybe the "butter" part of "cocoa butter" is what gets people confused. But... just like peanut butter, it has no dairy in it. The more cocoa solids chocolate has in it, the darker it is. The reverse is true as well... white chocolate only has cocoa butter in it, no cocoa solids at all. Unsweetened chocolate (for baking) and dark chocolate are the only chocolates that don't have added milk, however. Even the dark chocolates are hard to find without some kind of dairy in them. 

My co-teacher, who was born in, and lived in Russia until her 20's, said to me, "Why do they add all that stuff to chocolate? Chocolate is chocolate! If you want candy, go eat candy. But don't mess around with chocolate! We don't do that in Russia." :) 

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