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I bought a chocolate Easter bunny last week and the chocolate was nasty. It tasted more like wax than anything. Blech!
Dairy Milk all the way for me. I can tolerate Hershey's, but it doesn't compare.
As for dark, anything above 50-60% tastes too bitter for me.
Are you sure it was real chocolate? Or was the word "flavored" snuck in there somewhere?
A frightening amount of Easter candy is made with fake chocolate, usually hydrogenated oils or other fats flavored with cocoa powder. They are required by law to call it "chocolate flavored," although the other day I saw bunnies labeled "MILK CHOCOLATE" in giant letters with the word "flavored" printed in tiny white letters on a yellow background.
Note the tiny "flavored" at the bottom of this package.
I got burned one Easter, and ever since I've always checked the packaging and the list of ingredients very carefully.
Good:
Milk Chocolate [Sugar, Whole Milk, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Soy Lecithin (an Emulsifier), Vanillin (an Artificial Flavor)].
Bad:
Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Palm Kernel Oil and/or Palm Oil), Whey, Cocoa, Lactose, Skim Milk, Soy Lecithin, Vanillin, Artificial Colors (Blue #1, Blue #2, Red #40, Yellow #5, Yellow #6 & Red #3). May contain Peanuts/Nuts.
Oh, and I find Hershey's chocolate nasty. It's got a grainy texture and it burns the back of my throat. I think it's the lowest quality real chocolate available. Even Nestle's is better.
I get the burn from Hershey's too.
This is strange. I haven't had Hershey's in a long time because it tastes like wax to me. (Try belgium chocolates if you can, those are great!).
But, thinking about how Hershey's has sent their production off shore.... and about what China has put into baby milk products... I have to wonder what is causing that burning sensation.
I'm buying my easter chocolate from a local producer. You can go down an watch them make it right on the spot, so not a whole lot of oils going into that stuff.
The process is a trade secret, but experts speculate that the milk is partially lipolyzed, producing butyric acid, which stabilizes the milk from further fermentation. This compound gives the product a particular sour, "tangy" taste.
other chocolate manufacturers now simply add butyric acid to their milk chocolates.
85% is plenty sweet when you are used to having a low sugar diet. Let the chocolate preference wars begin!
Ankh-Morpork people, said the guild, were hearty, no-nonsense folk who did not want chocolate that was stuffed with cocoa liquor and were certainly not like effete la-di-dah foreigners who wanted cream in everything. In fact, they actually preferred chocolate made mostly from milk, sugar, suet, hooves, lips, miscellaneous squeezings, rat droppings, plaster, flies, tallow, bits of tree, hair, lint, spiders, and powdered cocoa husks. This meant that, according to the food standards of the great chocolate centers in Borogravia and Quirm, Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as “cheese” and only escaped, through being the wrong color, being defined as “tile grout.”
Hershey's apparently has a special technique to make milk chocolate cheaper than anybody else, since it can use -- er -- unfresh milk.
Butyric acid is also found in vomit and Parmigian cheese, and guess what -- it is what makes a lot of American milk chocolate taste so vile.
Americans got so used to the stinging, sour taste of cheap Hershey's milk chocolate that according to an article in the New York Times: (Dark may be king, but milk chocolate makes a move),
No wonder European chocolate is so much better.
Thats why I buy 85% dark.
Hershey's doesn't even come close to being "good" chocolate.
If you're in Canada (and a few other places) Callebaut chocolate is ideal.... hm. Website says they've been bought... will have to wait and see if quality continues.
Just keep in mind that you get what you pay for, even in the high % cocoa stuff, and chocolate should never have hydrogenated oils in it, and should never come from Walmart or a drugstore.