Chocolate has become a super commodity across the world nowadays, but not many of you know that its history gets its roots back in 1500 BC in the times of Olmec Indians who used to cultivate the cocoa plants. They would have further dried the fruits of this plant and consume it as a beverage made especially for the elite. Later Christopher Columbus was reported to destroy a cargo of these cocoa beans being convinced that they were simply ‘sheep droppings’.
But realizing eventually that he has done a mistake he managed to bring the first transport of cocoa beans in Spain after coming back from America. This is about all for a while as nothing more was heard of it, until one day when some Spanish monks discovered that these beans can be crushed and turned into a delicious hot beverage. Pretty soon many Chocolate Houses opened selling this hot beverage at huge prices due to the hard process of grinding the roasted cocoa beans.
But with the advent of mechanized grinders, around 1700, the ground cocoa appeared on the market leading to a drop in the price and to a gradually attempt into making chocolate. First there were merely the cakes that were coated in cocoa and other types of desserts using chocolate as delicious frosting. Then it came the temerarious attempt of American bakers to make chocolate in a big way. This process was possible through the existence of Bakers Chocolate Company.
Many reasons have determined the Americans to mass produce chocolate, and one of them is the therapeutic property of chocolate. In Holland, Dutch manufacturers have invented a process called ‘Dutching” through which chocolate is produced mush smoother in texture due to the removal of cocoa butter in it.
In the middle of the 19th century chocolate could be formed in the molded form resulting as such in chocolate candies. When the dutched chocolate was added sugar it was noticed to become more delicious and softer, thus was born the one that we are familiar with nowadays – the chocolate bar. Next there was the turn of milk and Swiss chocolate and with the Valentine’s Day, Cadbury saw it as a great opportunity to release its products with a glamorous success.
Nowadays American people are extremely fond of chocolate; in fact they have fallen for it the days it first set foot on American soil. There is the famous chocolate chips cakes, the Brownies that have gathered popularity in every American family. The first recipe of Brownies appeared at the end of 19th century in the Sears Roebuck Catalogue.