Free Online Chocolate Making Course !!!

How do we teach chocolate making online?

Ecole Chocolat's intensive chocolate making programs and chocolate classes prepare you to find your place in the retail or wholesale chocolate industry. Whether you aspire to work for yourself or in a professional organization, our chocolate school's specialized curriculum is just what you need.

Although our Chocolate Making Programs are online, you won't be out there all by yourself. You'll be working with the instructor and online tutors, while interacting with your classmates—sharing information, accomplishments and expertise. Our nine years of experience in award-winning, university-level online education ensures that your learning experience is intensive, comprehensive and enjoyable and some useful books to help enchance your chocolate making more fun at home...

a) Chocolate Emperor : Inside Secret World of Hersheys and Mars by Joel Glenn Brenner

b) Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme

c) The Art of Chocolate: Techniques and Recipes for Simply Spectacular Desserts and Confections

Fun Facts About Chocolates !!!

Monkeys found chocolate first, not people.

Traces of chocolate have been found in ancient Mayan pottery - from 3,400 years ago!

The word Chocolate comes from the Aztec words for "Bitter Water" .

Both the Mayans and Aztecs associate chocolate with fertility!

The first English chocolate house opened in London in 1657, 53 years after the word "Chocolate" was first used in English.

Chocolate is poisonous to horses, dogs, cats, rodents and parrots - but essential for people!

50 million people depend upon cocoa for a living.

Queen Victoria sent 100,000 boxes of chocolate to soldiers fighting in the Boer War on New Year's Day, 1900.

The Tropicana casino in Atlantic City sells a super deluxe chocolate brownie - the "Brownie Extraordinaire with Saint Louis" for $1,000!

A chocolate massage ???

As per the latest research findings Chocolate, especially cocoa based is found to be rich source of anti-oxidants, that arrests aging signs. Now the Spas have taken a step in this direction and have started using chocolates for body treatments. Chocolates are topically applied on skin, to ward off blemishes, wrinkles and soften the skin.

Therapy Highlights

a. First an exfoliating body scrub is applied on the skin, the body scrub removes dead skin accumulated and dirt which prevent the absorption of beneficial ingredients of cocoa.

b. Next a thick cover of chocolate (blended with essence oils) is applied

c. Then the body is wrapped in a soft silk blanket to enhance the effect. And finally everything is washed off.

d. The chocolate wrap is imported from England, Switzerland and Spain.

e. The chocolate massage treatment is not edible because the chocolate mud is mixed with essence oils

WORLD'S 5 MOST EXPENSIVE CHOCOLATES

5. Godiva

Creator: Godiva “G” Collection

Cost: $117 per pound

Location: New York City, New York

4. RICHARD

Creator:  Richart ©

Cost: $120 per pound

Location: Lyon, France

3. DELAFEE

Creator: Delfee©

Cost: $504 per pound

Location: Neuchatel, Switzerland

2. NOKA

Creator: Noka Vintages Collection

Cost: $854 per pound

Location: Dallas, Texas

1.     CHOCOPOLOGIES

 

• Creator: Knipschildt
• Cost: $2,600 per pound
• Location: Norwalk, Connecticut

Top 10 Chocolate Brands in the World

 1)  Ghirardelli ~ is one of the few chocolate companies in the United States to control every aspect of its chocolate manufacturing process,rejecting up to 40% of the cocoa beans shipped in order to select what the company calls the "highest quality" beans.

2)  Lindt & Spugli Chocolate ~ Lindor is a type of chocolate produced by Lindt, which is characterized by a hard chocolate shell and a smooth chocolate filling.Lindt also produces the 'Gold Bunny', a hollow milk chocolate rabbit in a variety of sizes available every Easter. Each bunny wears a small red ribbon bow around its neck, with a bell attached.

3)  Ferrero Rocher ~ Ferrero Rocher is a spherical chocolate sweet made by Italian chocolatier Ferrero Spa.The sweets consist of a whole roasted hazelnut encased in a thin wafer shell filled with hazelnut cream and covered in milk chocolate and chopped hazelnuts and walnuts.

4)  Thorntons ~ Thorntons is a British Chocolate company.Over the next few years, as Thorntons got a name for itself, thye created a uniquely rich and chewy ‘special’ toffee.

5)  Hershey's ~ While this company was successfully selling sweet chocolate products, Milton Hershey knew that a fortune lay in creating and selling milk chocolate products. Milton built a milk-processing plant .Later Hershey introduced a new candy, small flat-bottomed conical-shaped pieces of chocolate that he named hershey's kisses.

6)  Guylian ~ Guylian is a Belgian chocolate manufacturer.Guylian Chocolates are some of the finest available! Decadent, rich and perfect chocolates for your dining pleasureGuylian is most famous for their production of chocolate sea shells, with a praline filling.

7)  Godiva ~ Godiva's assortment offers a great combination of Solid Milk Chocolate, Solid Dark Chocolate, Solid White Chocolate, Milk Chocolate with Smooth Caramel, Milk Chocolate with Almonds, and Dark Chocolate with Raspberry all-of-a-kind chocolate assortments are designed for those who know exactly what they want in milk chocolates. 

8)  Neuhaus ~ The Neuhaus Chocolate offers comprehensive selection of our individually hand crafted Belgian chocolates. It celebrates history of creating the finest and best Belgium chocolates.

9)  Richart ~ French chocolate maker, is truly dedicated to producing fine chocolates for chocolate lovers around the world.Chocolatier's art with RICHARTs assorted ballotins is wonderful.It offers the different taste sensations.

10)                    NOKA ~ It focuses solely on the highest quality single-estate dark chocolate and as such there is no vanilla in any of our chocolate. The chocolate is in its rarest and purest form, unadulterated by vanilla and emulsifiers such as soy lecithin.

Amount of cacao consumed each year !!!

World consumption is estimated 2 800 000 tons per year. The largest cacao importers are Europe (more than 1.2 million tons per year) and United States (0.4 million tons per year). The largest impoters are Holland, the US, German, Britain and Brazil.

Europe
European countries are the largest consumers of cocoa and chocolate. Each country has its own preferences and style of chocolate, the popularity of different products varying according to national taste. On average, the Swiss munch approximately 10.55 kg of chocolate per person per year. As a nation, Great Britain consumes more than 500,000 tons of chocolate per year. In France, the average consumption per person is 6.8 kg per year, with the New Year and Easter celebrations being the most important occasions for tasting and offering chocolate gifts. Eastern European countries are considered an important emerging new market and should remain so for the foreseeable future.

Malaysia and its prospect in Cacao production. Asia/Oceania Beginning in the mid 1980s, Malaysia emerged as one of the principal sources of cocoa, providing 450,000 hectares of production by 1989. During the 1990s, Malaysia was overtaken by Indonesia, which gained 17% of total world production in 2001-2002. While Malaysia has been deploying a policy to diversify its agricultural output, Indonesia has been keenly focused on expanding cocoa production. As in Latin America, most Asian production occurs on larger, more industrialized farms.

Recipes !!!

Chocolate Balls with Caramelized Almonds

Yield: about 60
Flavorless oil for the baking sheet
1 1/4 cups (9 ounces) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (2 ounces) water
1 2/3 cups (9 Ounces) whole blanched almonds, at room temperature
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
Lightly oil a baking sheet with oil.

Mix the sugar and water in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. Use an unlined copper sugar-pot if you have one. Cook the syrup over medium heat, stirring once or twice, until the sugar dissolves, and turn off the heat when it starts to form golden syrup..

Add the almonds. Stir until the sugar syrup clumps and turns opaque or until sugar syrup coats the almonds.
Carefully pour the syrup coated almonds onto the oiled baking sheet. Be careful -- the almonds will be very hot.

the candy is cool, break it apart. Store it in an airtight container (not in the refrigerator) until you are ready to make the chocolate balls.
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over simmering water. (how to melt chocolate)
Use a food processor to grind the candy into a powder.
Mix the candy powder and the warm chocolate together. Make balls using your palms. Dip your fingers in cold water to prevent the chocolated to melt in your palms. Rest in refrigerator , serve cold with warm coffe and exotic cheese cuts.

How chocolates benefits you ?

Is chocolate good for you? Yes! The health benefits of chocolate are many... assuming we're talking about the same thing, that is. I'm talking about chocolate in its purest form - as close to the bean as you can get. If you want me to tell you a Milky Way bar is good for you, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.
 
Some of you may be thinking that a dark chocolate bar is bitter or yucky. If you aren't a fan of dark chocolate, you've probably never had the good stuff. So just what are the amazing health benefits of chocolate? Most notably, chocolate is a champion antioxidant. Antioxidants help rid the body of free radicals, nasty little molecules running amok in your body which cause aging and disease. Antioxidants bond to free radicals and whisk them from your body via digestion and other means.

The bottom line is that indulging in a small amount of dark chocolate might be the perfect dessert - satisfying your sweet tooth while treating your body to the many health benefits of chocolate. So next time you're craving dessert, reach for the dark chocolate, and hold the guilt.

Where does chocolate comes from ?

Where does chocolate come from? Actually, it DOES grow on trees. It all starts with a small tropical tree, the Theobroma cacao, usually called simply, "cacao." (Pronounced ka-KOW. Theobroma is Greek for "food of the gods.") Cacao is native to Central and South America, but it is grown commercially throughout the tropics. About 70% of the world's cacao is grown in Africa.

A cacao tree can produce close to two thousand pods per year. The ridged, football shaped pod, or fruit, of the cacao grows from the branches and, oddly, straight out of the trunk. The pods, which mature throughout the year, encase a sticky white pulp and about 30 or 40 seeds. The pulp is both sweet and tart; it is eaten and used in making drinks. The seeds, were you to bite into one straight out of the pod, are incredibly bitter. Not at all like the chocolate that comes from them.

History of Cacao

Chocolate history starts out in Latin America, where cacao trees grow wild. The first people to use chocolate were probably the Olmec of what is today southeast Mexico. They lived in the area around 1000 BC, and their word, "kakawa," gave us our word "cacao." Unfortunately, that's all we know. We don't know how (or even if) the Olmec actually used chocolate.

We do know, however, that the Maya, who inhabited the same general area a thousand years later (from about 250-900 AD), did use chocolate. A lot. And not just internally. It is with the Maya that chocolate history really begins.

The cacao beans were used as currency. 10 beans would buy you a rabbit or a prostitute. 100 beans would buy you a slave. Some clever person even came up with a way to counterfeit beans - by carving them out of clay. The beans were still used as currency in parts of Latin America until the 19th century!