Handmade With Love

Chocolates are considered azure chocolate to be the most scrumptious snacks when it comes to sweets. There would be no one, who wouldn’t love chocolates. Some of these chocolates are completely made up of cocoa beans and some of them come with different fillings in them as well, such as orange, coconut, banana and caramel fillings. These chocolates have made their own place amongst people and are always in demand, as many people cannot eat pure chocolates because of their slightly bitter nature. Mars Incorporated was the first company, which introduced the coconut chocolate, named as Bounty Bar Chocolate.

Introduced in the year 1951, these coconut filled chocolates became an instant hit and people thronged to buy these immensely delicious chocolate bars. Bounty bar chocolate basically has a coconut filling, which is made by crushing coconut into very small pieces and mixing it with dark chocolate. Another bar with milk chocolate coating is also produced. It comes in a blue wrapper, whereas the dark chocolate comes in a white wrapper. In beginning, cherry and mango flavored bounty chocolates were also introduced but these could not match the popularity of coconut filled dark bounty chocolate.

What makes this chocolate very desirable is the combination. Coconut, when mixed with dark chocolate gives a very succulent and tender taste to the chocolate, which instantly melts into the mouth when eaten. The chocolate with the coconut filling serves as a good appetizer and can be used as a lunch snack. Bounty bar chocolate needs to be eaten straight out of the refrigerator. If you keep it out of the fridge for some time and then eat it, you won’t be able to enjoy the flavor completely. So, it is important to make sure that these chocolates were kept in a fridge while you are buying them. If you are buying them in a stock, keep them stored in a refrigerator, so you get to enjoy the real taste of these every time you get one out to eat.

A normal Bounty bar chocolates pack has two mini chocolate bars, each 6 cm long and 2. 5 cm wide. The palm trees printed over the wrapper make you feel like you are near a beach full of coconut trees. One mini bar seems to be too short to enjoy the taste fully, but there is another mini bar to follow. If you haven not eaten this chocolate, you definitely should try this heavenly treat.

Chocolate is so integrated into today’s culture that it seems like it has always been around. And yet, like everything else, it had a beginning and an evolution into what we know and love as chocolate today. So where did it start? Ironically it started where it is not the leading sweet or candy in the country or continent.

In fact, chocolate did not start as the marvelously sweet and smooth bars of goodness we eat nowadays. Instead it started as a spicy, bitter drink among the Mayans of ancient South america reserved for their society’s elite class. They ground up the cocoa beans from the Theobroma cacao tree to create an unsweetened cocoa drink.

Next came a series of events that eventually brought the cocoa bean to the attention of Europe. The Aztecs, who traded with the Mayans, integrated the cocoa in their culture. First Christopher Columbus, then Hernando Cortez both came exploring and conquering. Each brought back samples of this new drink. Cortez, however, was the one who managed to hold the attention of Spain with his cocoa beans and recipes for preparing chocolate.

The Spanish took out the spicy chiles that the South Americans put in and replaced it with sugar to make it more palatable. From Spain this new chocolate was taken to Italy then spread out to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The Germans loved it so much that it became habitual to have a cup of chocolate before going to bed.

Dr. Joseph Fry created a machine that would grind the cocoa beans so that it could be produced on a larger scale. Then, over fifty years later, his grandson Francis Fry discovers a way to make the chocolate edible, not just a drink. This was the first chocolate bar to be made but still not the chocolate with know today.

Rodolphe Lindt was just the person to come up with that solution. Lindt invented the “conching” machine to heat the chocolate and refined it into a smoother consistency. Milton Hershey made chocolate even more popular when he began mass-producing affordable chocolate bars for the public. Those first Hershey chocolate bars were only 5 cents!

From there the chocolate industry continued to grow and expand into a worldwide commodity. The new York Cocoa Exchange was created and sales were booming. That is when World War II hit. Chocolate was among the food that was rationed. The sale of chocolate cut in half. Kit Kat production ground to a halt and was suspended.

Luckily for the chocolate world, World War II ended and chocolate made its comeback in popularity and sales. However, Spain lost its standing as the number one chocolate country. Switzerland rose to the top and is still considered the leader in chocolate.