The Latest Chocolate Happenings
I bring you the latest chocolate happenings…or at least the latest chocolate happenings that amused me, made me slightly sad, made me go “hmmm”….
First, allow me to present my latest favorite chocolate-and-tea-photograph.
Pictured: Orange peels covered in dark chocolate by St. Moritz & Celestial Seasonings fruit tea sampler. (I love this sampler, though it is hard to choose between wild berry, true blueberry, country peach passion, raspberry zinger, and wild cherry berry.)
The latest chocolate news that made me go hmmmm….
MycoTechnology Uses Mushrooms to Create Sweeter Chocolate With Less Sugar
“By using gourmet mushrooms and their natural cleansing abilities, we are able to train them to consume only the bitter compounds in chocolate,” the company explains on its website. “The mushrooms symbiotically interact with their food source, giving back valuable nutrients otherwise unavailable in chocolate.”
In other words, we will be able to eat more chocolate. Because there will be less sugar. Because some mushrooms took special eating classes. Ok then. As long as the taste of the mushroom chocolate is in no wise compromised by the mushrooms themselves (and apparently it isn’t, as “they can make great tasting chocolate”) I’m game for trying it!
The latest chocolate news I got quite a chuckle out of:
The Toblerone debacle (as I call it). If you missed all the fuss, it boils down to the fact that Toblerone, when faced with rising production costs, decided to *gasp* widen the gap between each triangle “mountain” shape they are so famous for (therefore reducing the amount of chocolate per bar).
Twitter went crazy. A search on #Toblerone provided several chuckles.
#Toblerone in another 3 years: pic.twitter.com/EUmhB5x1FP
— Lisa (@biscuitahoy) November 8, 2016
Apparently this switch means I may be the unexpected owner of two “limited edition” Toblerone bars that could be worth a lot of money if I hang on to them long enough. (Which isn’t likely.) (I say “may”, because I haven’t rustled through my chocolate drawer yet to see if the size I have was affected by the new design. In all the uproar, not everyone realized that not nearly all Toblerone sizes were affected.)
The latest chocolate happening that made me a little sad:
The Northwest Chocolate Festival in Seattle, which wrapped this Sunday (if I have the story straight). Judging by a slew of Instagram posts, it was one of THE, if not THE, chocolate events of the year (at least in the U.S.). Quite a few people came away with quite impressive hauls of craft chocolate (Exhibit A and Exhibit B, to name a few) and it looks like great fun was had by all (meeting the people behind the brands, meeting the chocolate aficionados, tasting all that amazing chocolate)… I am a little sorry to have missed it, but I most certainly enjoyed all the photos. I saw SO many brands I have yet to try & so many brands that I have tried once and loved (TCHO, Dick Taylor, Amano, etc.)
(One of the) Latest chocolate(s) I tried for the first time:
Alter Eco Dark Chocolate with Quinoa. While I enjoyed the crunchy dark chocolate itself, I had a blast taking pictures of it. (Let’s just say by the time I was finished, my mom wouldn’t have wanted the quinoa I “borrowed” back.) Pictures are coming as soon as I finish sweeping up quinoa from the far corners of my room…
That’s all for now…
