This Christmas Beautiful Girlfriend got something cool in her stocking. My father or some other elfish person slipped a box of truffles in there. Unfortunately BG does not eat sugary treats, so this may work out in my favor if I play my cards right. Maybe I can trade her my Ernie Kovacs DVDs for the truffles. After I watch them, of course.
What goodies did you get this year?
The people at ThinkGeek have done it again, coming up with a great creative product just in time for the holidays. This is genius. Good job, folks!
Taste the rich, chocolate bounty
- Straight from Tatooine’s Tasty Treats
- Looks like Han Solo trapped in carbonite
- Made from delicious dark chocolate
- Gourmet Dark chocolate molded to look like Han Solo frozen in carbonite
- Trust us, chocolate tastes much better than carbonite
- Comes in a box suitable for gifting to your favorite Star Wars fan
- Officially licensed Star Wars edible delight
- Exclusive product designed and manufactured by ThinkGeek
- Each bar is 4.5 oz of premium dark chocolate and measures 6 inches in length
Thank you, Virgin America, for including a little chocolate square in Beautiful Girlfriend’s in-flight meal. Of course she gave it to me. That’s just how sweet she is. I am a lucky guy.
At 12,000 pounds, that’s what I call fun size! Really, though, this would only be fun for about ten minutes or so, until you realized that this is the stuff hells from ancient Greek mythology are made of. Imagine having to eat 12,000 pounds of deliciousness while pushing a boulder up a hill and getting your liver pecked out by an eagle.
See pictures of the giant chocolate bar at World’s Finest Chocolate.
If you never got to try Cholive, you really missed out. It was a brilliant idea – a chocolate truffle in the shape of an olive, intended as a garnish for chocolate martinis and other rich cocktails. It was a great idea but I think came to fruition at the wrong time, when businesses were trying to save money instead of adopting a new luxury item for their restaurants.
I first encountered Cholive at the 2010 Sweets and Snacks Expo, when the very lovely Summer Dragon, national sales director at the time, asked for some information about her booth location. I was in the press booth. What did I know from booth space? I knew bupkis. I was eager to help her anyway and got her taken care of and she said to stop by the booth. When she described the product, all I heard was chocolate and cocktail. She had me sold.
Later I stopped by the Cholive booth and was blown away. It was delicious – a chocolate olive that was served alongside a chocolate cocktail. Very creative and sophisticated too. Almost everyone I talked to among the press asked what new products excited me and I told them to visit Cholive and talk to Summer. Their product was a real hit. My colleagues and I were quite sad when, a few weeks after the Expo, we learned that Cholive was closing its doors.
So what went wrong? Why didn’t Cholive succeed? I think it was largely timing. They were on the leading edge of what was to be a pretty serious recession and they had a gourmet product. Not a great combination. In addition, did the cocktail industry need this item? Would it encourage liquor sales at restaurants and bars? Probably not. It might create repeat customers and even lead to a few new customers, but chocolate cocktails are not the stuff that make or break a restaurant. Overall liquor sales are, but one specific item is not. All the same, it was a great product and could be a nice addition to a bar’s portfolio and help establish it as “the place” to get a chocolate martini or other drink.
I sincerely hope we see Cholive reemerge as times get better and we have more money in our collective wallets. Infusion of gourmet chocolates into the bar world can make someone a lot of money and the market is largely untapped. can the two worlds merge? I say yes. We already see some chocolate drinks in high-end bars and even see cocoa nibs being used at some high-end restaurants. Why not real chocolate – as opposed to chocolate liqueur – at a bar? Its time will come. For now we just need to wait until the right time and hope that a company as good as Cholive, perhaps again led by Summer Dragon, can make it happen.
you kick yourself for not thinking of. While a dry martini is rarely served
without an olive, or a gin and tonic without a lime, coffee liqueur- and
cream-based cocktails are often left naked, without a single garnish to boost
their character.Graphic designer Joe
Hausch observed this vacancy within the world’s garnish caddies and came up
with a simple but brilliant concept: the Cholive, featuring whole cream ganache
in a rich, dark chocolate truffle. The olive-shaped Cholive can even fit on a
toothpick.
“Gourmet, premium
chocolate is a $2.5 billion industry,” Gentine explains. “Yet, for the most
part, it doesn’t exist in bars and restaurants.” Formed as the Cholive Co. in
May 2007, Hausch and Gentine decided to be the first to bring it to that
market.
Surfing the trend of
smaller portion sizes, the Cholive Co.’s chocolates are a perfect mini
dessert—enough to satisfy the craving without eating or spending too much. And
because of Gentine and Hausch, the chocolate martini will never have to be
served naked again.n
This sort of result is always interesting to me, and so are the many ways people interpret this sort of thing. This doesn’t mean that the best prevention to heart disease is to eat lots of chocolate. More investigation is necessary before making that kind of connection, although I am hopeful it will come to that sort of conclusion, which we all know to not really be true.
I also hope that someday I can go on the beer and marbled meat diet to lose weight, but I am not holding my breath for anything like that to happen either.
A Cambridge University-led systematic review published today in the British Medical Journal has concluded that polyphenol-rich consumption can reduce the risk of heart disease by a third.
The review highlighted seven studies with more than 100,000 participants and concluded that while more studies were required, “levels of chocolate consumption seem to be associated with a substantial reduction in the risk of cardiometabolic disorders.”
The researchers found the prevalence of cocoa crops in the developing world meant chocolate could be utilised there more to redress increasing rates of heart disease.
They said the prevalence of cocoa crops in the developing world meant chocolate could be utilised there more to redress increasing rates of heart disease.
“These favourable effects seem mainly mediated by the high content of polyphenols present in cocoa products and probably accrued through increasing the bioavailability of nitric oxide, which subsequently might lead to improvements in endothelial function, reductions in platelet function, and additional beneficial effects on blood pressure, insulin resistance, and blood lipids,” they wrote.
If this isn’t a perfect model of the divine, I don’t know what is.
Melissa Smith of Zoey Cakes has made what may be the ultimate Cadbury Creme Egg creation. It’s baked with an egg inside, covered with vanilla buttercream frosting, and then topped with a mini egg.
I have to admit something here. I don’t buy Lindt chocolates. Ever. I like their chocolate but something about the packaging turns me off. The white cardboard is simply unattractive. I like their fonts and love the pictures but overall I find the packaging hard to take. Other people have given me Lindt chocolate and I have loved the product but I can’t bring myself to buy it.
I might have to make an exception for the dark chocolate with caramel bar. This looks good. It’s a great combination I don’t think I will be able to pass up.
New Lindt Excellence Dark Caramel combines two favourite flavours, rich dark chocolate and caramel, in one seriously addictive block. It’s a sophisticated new take on a classic recipe and destined to become a new classic with the millions of caramel-lovers around Australia.
Every square of Excellence Dark Caramel holds small pieces of sweet caramel scattered through silky-smooth, dark chocolate, giving it a delightful crunch as well as a remarkable depth of flavour.
First off, I had no idea Lebanon had such a great reputation for chocolate. I will have to tell my friend who goes over there every few years to bring some back next time.
It’s sad to see this sort of thing. It’s almost like there is not enough demand for the product, despite it being highly sought after. Plain and simple, the costs of production are outweighing the revenues. It’s a tough spot to be in. Moving into industrial zones will help, no doubt.
BEIRUT: In its heyday, Lebanon was known as “the Switzerland of the Middle East,” but the similarities between the two countries today go beyond picturesque mountains and a tradition of discreet banking policies: Both countries are carving out a reputation for themselves in the art of chocolate making.
Since 1819, Swiss chocolate has been recognized as a world standard which other countries can only dream of attaining. Meanwhile, Lebanon ranks as the top country in the Middle East in the field of chocolate manufacturing.
In fact, Lebanon’s chocolate makers have earned regional recognition to the extent that countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are importing products from Lebanon despite the higher cost of production in this country.
“The Arab market relies heavily on the chocolate produced in Lebanon because of its good quality and taste,” said Ahmad Ismail, partner at Net Group Distribution which specializes in the production of chocolate and its distribution in the local and Arab markets.
Ismail said the cost of production in the Arab market such as Saudi Arabia might be lower but the “Made in Lebanon” label is much more attractive to the Arab market than any other labels.
It offers high end products that are considered among the best in the world. The company has more than 140 outlets in 35 countries and produces chocolates that blend Swiss and Belgian styles.
Despite the great popularity of the Lebanese chocolate industry throughout the Arab world, chocolate producers interviewed by The Daily Star expressed their concerns over the challenges faced by the industry.
According to a Working Paper by the International Monetary Fund in 2010, electricity constraints in addition to a skilled labor shortage and insufficient access to finance for businesses are costing the Lebanese economy up to 4.3 percent in real per capita GDP growth per year. It added that electricity constraints are the major obstacle to growth identified by businesses in Lebanon. It also noted that 61 percent of firms in the country consider electricity shortages to be a major obstacle to their production, which is similar to the West Bank and Gaza’s figure of 64 percent, and is much higher than in other economies in the region that either have a high population or lack natural resources.
An industrial zone is an area planned for the purpose of industrial development. It is usually located outside the main residential area of a city and is normally provided with good transportation access. It usually provides industrialists with facilities such as low rental costs, security services, 24 hours of electricity service and many other perks.
This study shows that while traceability systems can be implemented for can work, allowing ingredients to be traced back to their origin, they would be horribly inefficient to implement. The case here looks at cocoa, showing that if all the bags from the farmers are labeled properly and the chain of custody is documented and the end-product manufacturers change their production processes, then it is in theory possible to know where the ingredients in my chocolate bar came from, where they traveled to, and where processed.
This is a simple study, looking at one ingredient. Look at the label of your chocolate bar and you may see anywhere from five or six ingredients all the way to maybe a dozen or more. For traceability to work the way we want and be thorough, we would have to be able to trace each ingredient back to the farm it came from. cocoa is one thing – and hard enough to tackle – but other ingredients may be even tougher.
What about something like corn syrup? If a candy manufacturer uses corn syrup, he would have to be able to trace it back to the farm, which would mean relying on the syrup producer to change his manufacturing process as well. Inefficiencies abound everywhere in this type of system.
Food security is a serious issue, as is how companies deal with recalls. I do not mean to belittle efforts to improve the safety of the foods we eat. However, I think traceability, at least the way we think about it today, is not the way to go.
The idea of traceability of ingredients and figuring out how to keep all the records straight is mind-boggling. It would necessitate a level of record-keeping that is not used at the moment that relies on too many individuals in a number of different countries keeping proper records in the same easily accessible format. The cost of implementation and maintenance would likely be cost prohibitive for people at the beginning of the chain. All of a sudden, instead of growing and selling cocoa (their primary business), they have to keep records in a certain way. That costs more because it either requires a new employee or takes employees away from their normal duties.
It reminds me of a job I had that required a lot of concentration to do, but my supervisor wanted updates several times per day, which meant breaking my concentration. It was crazy.
Recalls of chocolate products could be significantly lower if there was more rigorous traceability in the chocolate supply chain and if brand owners adopted processing techniques that relied on reduced batch dispersion, find a new study.
The authors of research published in Food Control said their findings indicate chocolate brand owners could achieve a reduction of the magnitude of a recall in case of contamination of the raw material of 55 or 99 per cent through greater transparency at the sourcing stage.
They also concluded that adopting a chocolate production strategy based on low batch dispersion, where the chocolate manufacturer avoids mixing different batches of cocoa beans, would help lead to reduced exposure to contamination and subsequent product recalls.
There is a trade off though in terms of adopting this method as it would negatively impact production efficiency, caution the researchers, who are based in the Department of Management Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark.
Currently no full traceability is in use in the supply chain of chocolate, report the researchers. While there is full traceability within the European borders, this is lost when part of the supply chain goes outside these borders, they note.
The simulation model also included a basic traceability system (TS0) and two improved traceability systems (TS+ and TS++).
One of the other systems TS+ is an extension of TSO where the local buying stations mark all cocoa bags with a unique code and the buying date. These codes are then registered so that the finished chocolate can be traced back to the local buying station.
TS++ extends from TS+ in that the cocoa farmers, when packing the cocoa beans, mark all bags with unique codes and date. In this case the finished chocolate is traceable up to the individual cocoa farmer.
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