I think it was Von Bismark that said something to the effect that both the making of politics and sausage make the stomache turn, but in N.America you can add chocolate to the list.
REAL chocolate is called couveture, French for covering. This is the real deal, but because of the complicated nature of the cocoa butter, it require tempering. The tempering process requires melting the couveture to 45 C, then cool it edown to 27 C, then slowly re-warming it to a working temperature of 32 C.
As cocoa butter require special handling, and as it is very valuable in other areas such as cosmetics and pharmceuticals, many chocolate companies choose to sell the cocoa butter and replace it with another fat when making their chocolate. These fats do not require special handling, but have "weird" flavour, leave a greasy mouth feel in your mouth, and don't have the hard "snap" a good chocolate has. The cheapo choclate companies also add in paraffin for shine and snap. With this information you can now gather that the many of the mainstream N.American Chocolate companies have little repect and lots of contempt for their customers.  |