Chocolate Delight

By Roland Duvall

CHOCOLATE DELIGHT

Become a Chocolate Expert

by Roland Duvall

Chocolate has been revered by the people of the Earth since the beginning of time. Historical records show that we've been consuming chocolate for more than 4,000 years. Cacao is native to the South Americas and the Amazonian Jungles and was transported to West Africa in the 1500s. It was so precious to the Aztecs of Ancient Mexico, that they used cacao beans for their main currency….Gold was used for aesthetic purposes only! Cacao was originally consumed as a beverage. It is still used in this way in many cultures, especially in South America.

Whether baked as chips into a cookie, melted into a sweet warm drink or molded into the shape of a smiling bunny, chocolate is one of the world's most universally consumed foods.

No matter if it's enjoyed as creamy milk chocolate truffles, baked in a devilishly dark chocolate cake or even poured as hot cocoa, Americans on average consume almost 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of chocolate in a year.

Theobroma Cacao is the Latin name for chocolate and means "Food of the Gods". As one of the most Sacred foods on the Planet, it has won the hearts of more people than any other food. There is a mystery to chocolate… its dark brown/purple color, its sensual texture, its potent bittersweet flavor, and complete nutritional profile has inspired everything from love and poetry, to robust heart health and strength to people from across the continents.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Royal Hawaiian Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215286869

Book preview

Chocolate Delight

Chocolate Delight

Become a Chocolate Expert

Roland Duvall

All material contained herein is Copyright

Copyright © Roland Duvall 2023

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Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9876759-6-0

ePub ISBN: 979-8-2152868-6-9

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Written by Roland Duvall

Published by Royal Hawaiian Press

Cover art by Tyrone Roshantha

Publishing Assistance by Dorota Reszke

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For more works by this author, please visit:

www.royalhawaiianpress.com

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission of the Author. Your support of Author’s rights is appreciated.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. What is the world's best chocolate?

3. Ethical Chocolate

4. The history of chocolate - from the Olmecs to the Aztecs

5. The history of chocolate  - enter Europe

6. Single Origin vs Single  Estate Chocolate

7. A Sensory Experience  - How to Taste

8. It Starts with a Bean | Bean to  Bar Processing

9. Taste with Me | Dark Chocolate

10. Taste with Me | Milk Chocolate

11. Secret ingredient which makes chocolate taste so good

12. Chocolate chemistry

13. It's a Wrap

Introduction

We are really excited to have you here with us with our chocolate appreciation book, because the thing I'm really passionate about is sharing the world's best chocolate with you. And as we go through today, you're going to learn what the world's best chocolate is.

I have some of it here as some examples. And of course, we'll go through some tasting. And one of the how I got into this and what I want to take you through is the experience that I had some years ago, maybe about 10 years ago.

I went to a chocolate appreciation class. Now, before that, I consider myself a chocoholic. I ate chocolate every day. I still do and thought I knew everything about chocolate.

And I went to this master class where I learned about these exceptional brands I've never heard of before, had no idea about.

And it blew my mind and opened my eyes that there's so much more to chocolate than what I, I knew. And what I realized through that is that I wasn't really a chocoholic. I was a Cadbury acholic or maybe a sugar acholic.

And since then, I've been on a real journey of learning about chocolate and sharing this passion with others. So, as we go through today, we're going to talk about all the different facets of chocolate that you've probably never even thought about before. And at the end of it, you're going to be your very own chocolate expert. So, enjoy the journey with me.

2. What is the world's best chocolate?

So, the next topic we're going to talk about for you to become a chocolate expert is ethics. It's by far the most negative, I guess, a topic that we're going to talk about.

But we're going to finish on a good note, because by the end of this, you'll know how to not only find the world's best chocolate, but the most ethical as well, which is really important because the chocolate industry is plagued with problems around ethics, particularly with the chocolate that comes out of West Africa, so that Ghana and Ivory Coast that we've been talking about and in those countries of Ghana and the Ivory Coast, you've got endemic problems that for the most part probably result in, at best poverty and at worst, much worse things such as forced labor, child labor and even death.

So, if we talk about poverty, there has been a global poverty line set at one dollar ninety US and anything anyone earning that up below that is considered to be living in poverty. If you look at what Cacao workers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast are earning, they're earning a median wage of between 75 cents and around 50 cents a day, so well below that poverty line. So, we've already got a huge issue with poverty.

These farmers and these workers aren't earning enough to live off. Secondly, we then get into issues around forced labor, which is a huge problem we have in the adult population working in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, up to thirteen thousand adults who have experienced forced labor.

And there's the potential that that figure is actually quite a bit higher. One of the problems we have is as consumers demand cheaper prices, as the market changes and prices come down, that puts more pressure on farmers to run at a certain cost.

And it means they're more likely to use forced labor. It also means they're more likely to use child labor. This is a really big problem in Ghana and the Ivory Coast and in those countries at the moment, you've got around two million children working in that industry and we're talking about quite young children.

So, in the Ivory Coast, for example, 41 percent of those children working in the industry are between the ages of 10 and 11. So, we're talking very young children. All of those children are exposed to hazardous workplaces, whether it's shop items with the machetes used to cut the Cacao pods, agrochemicals, heavy loads, et cetera. In addition of those children, there's a significantly high number who are forced labor as well, and they're being forced by somebody other than their parents.

So, when we talk about ethics, there's so much that we can talk about and there's examples that we can give. But I think it's important for us to move on and recognize what places, countries and what companies are doing great things