Cacahuatl becomes popular among the Aztec upper classes. The Aztecs see cacao as a gift of the plumed serpent god Quetzalcoatl, the god of light. The Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdez, who spent 1535 through 1545 as commander of the castle of Santo Domingo and returned to Spain with the appointment of Historian of the Spanish Indies. Santo Domingo, noted, “None but the rich and noble could afford to drink chocolatl as it was literally drinking money. Cocoa passed currency as money among all nations; thus a rabbit in Nicaragua sold for 10 cocoa nibs, and 100 of these seeds could buy a tolerably good slave.”

Spanish nuns in Oaxaca, Mexico are the first to sweeten chocolate with honey, cinnamon and cane sugar, making the drink popular with colonials. Spanish monks introduce the first sweetened drink to Spain around 1590. They sweeten it with honey and vanilla.³ Dominican friars take a delegation of Kekchi Mayan nobles from Alta Verapaz to visit Prince Philip of Spain. The Mayans bring gift jars of beaten cocoa, mixed and ready to drink. Spain and Portugal do not export the beloved drink to the rest of Europe for nearly a century. Early after its arrival, the Spanish replace the chile with sugar and keep the cinnamon to make the bitter cacao beverage their liking. It is decided that the beverage tastes better warm. According to The True History of Chocolate authors Sophie and Michael Coe, the most likely scenario for the development of the word “chocolate” is that the Spaniards combined the Maya word chocol, meaning “hot,” and the Aztec atl, meaning “water,” to produce chocolatl. The proper pronunciation of tl is “te.” It is surmised that they would not want to use the Aztec word, cacahuatl, because “caca” in Spanish is a vulgar word. The Olmec, a very sophisticated society, give much of their culture to the Maya, including “xocoatl,” sho-KWA-til. Consumption of cocoa beans is restricted to the Mayan society’s elite, in the form of an unsweetened cocoa drink made from the ground beans. Chocolate and orange is a classic flavour combination. Give your guests a little extra zest by using fresh orange segments to dip into a dark chocolate fountain. Our Chocolate Orange Tangs capture all the fresh bursts of citrus tang, using natural ingredients. Although these are already enrobed in our dark chocolate, there’s no harm in double-coating. Savoury nibbles Coenraad Van Houten invents the cocoa press, a hydraulic press, to squeeze out some of the cocoa butter from the beans, leaving behind the defatted cocoa powder. The nib of the bean is about 52% cocoa butter; Van Houten’s machine reduces the fat content by nearly half and creates a “press cake” that is pulverized into the fine powder known as cocoa. The powder is treated with alkaline salts so that it mixes more easily with water. The final product has a darker color and the beverage has a milder taste and a smoother consistency. Van Houten was Dutch and patented his invention in Amsterdam, so his alkalizing process becomes known as “dutching.” The invention helps cut prices as well; and the overall Industrial Revolution enables the mass production of chocolate, spreading its popularity among the citizenry.¹Brazil nuts have that creamy, almost vanilla-like taste. Mild, with a gentle nutty flavour, they’re a great marriage for the gentle notes of cacao butter in our white chocolate. Mini grissini

Dr. Stubbe writes that “Chocolate encouraged all sorts of physical prowess. The mighty lover, Casanova, found the drink as useful a lubrication to seduction as champagne.”¹ Following Valrhona’s pioneering efforts, other “designer chocolate bars” debut, including bars made from the beans of single plantations. Today, annual world consumption of cocoa beans averages approximately 600,000 tons, and per capita chocolate consumption is greatly on the rise. But the best chocolate, made of criollo beans, is just 5% of the world crop. A story of chocolate espionage hit the world press when an apprentice of the Swiss company of Suchard-Tobler unsuccessfully attempted to sell secret chocolate recipes to Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. Red peppers have a sweet, fresh crunch which pairs surprisingly well with milk chocolate. Cut them into strips for a fuss-free dipper. Dark chocolate fountain dipping ideas After 1700, drinking chocolate expands worldwide; chiles disappear as an ingredient except in Mexican mole sauces (returning in the late 1990s in “Aztec” cocoa recipes, thanks to the popularity of Mexican food).According to the Proposition 65 Maximum Allowable Daily Level (MADL) for Reproductive Toxicity for Cadmium report: “Exposure at a level 1,000 times greater than the MADL is expected to have no observable effect”. Louis XIV gives the chocolate monopolies of the Paris chocolate drink trade and the French Royal Court to David Chaillou, a baker who made costly biscuits and cakes with chocolate—France’s first “chocolatier.”²

The pioneer of Swiss chocolate-making, François Louis Callier, opens the first Swiss chocolate factory in Corsier, near Vevey. Ghiradelli, who imported beans from Peru to San Francisco to sell to gold prospectors, has discovered how to extract cocoa butter from ground cocoa to create a very soluble cocoa powder.as necessary to maintain, safeguard and preserve all the rights and property of Nibble Chocolate, LLC..

The indulgent choice for those who like their chocolate to be on the deeper side. We start our dark chocolate off at 70% cacao, going all the way to the top with our 100% Dark Chocolate Slabs. The higher the percentage, the more complex and nuanced the cacao taste. Sweet treats Let the deeper, more savoury notes of dark chocolate shine through with canapes and nibbles you may usually expect as starters, rather than desserts. Pretzels Swiss confiseur Jules Séchaud of Montreux introduces a machine process for manufacturing filled chocolates, creating the first box of filled chocolates. The Cote d’Ivoire is the world’s largest exporter of cacao beans, 1.4 million tons. The Netherlands both imports and grinds the most cacao. Some is made into chocolates; the remainder is processed into couverture and cocoa powder and exported to other countries which make their own chocolates from it. Fry sets up the first chocolate factory in Bristol, England using hydraulic machinery to process and grind the cacao beans.

Cacao is tasted by Columbus on his fourth and last voyage to the New World. Columbus encounters a great Mayan trading canoe on the island of Guanaja, off Honduras, carrying a cargo of cocoa beans. (Almost 500 years later, Valrhona, the great chocolate company, makes a grand cru chocolate bar and names it in honor of the island—it is spectacular chocolate.) He presents the King and Queen of Spain with beans, but Ferdinand and Isabella see no real worth in them.