Bad Chocolate

brainstorm77

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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!
 

Fenika

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Thats why I buy 85% dark.
 

brainstorm77

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I can't do dark, but I'm certainly going to stick to the more well known brands from now on.:D
 

Jessianodel

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Yeah most of those candies are like that. The cheap little hearts for valentines day or the ones shaped like presents for Christmas. I got a piece once where it was "chocolate flavored candy" and not even real chocolate. Best to stick with hershey or like you said, "known" brands. :D
 

Adam

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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.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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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.
 

GingerGunlock

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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.

I have a big, 80something% bar at home and my fiancé had a piece of it while I was at work and warned me that my chocolate had "gone bad". Sorry, honey, I bought it like that.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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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.
 

brainstorm77

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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.

It could have been. I tossed the whole thing in the garbage. No doubt you're right and it had all the bad stuff in it. It really was horrid.
 

brainstorm77

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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.
 

Adam

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Same here with Hershey's. It's not good choccy, imo.
 

Fins Left

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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.
 

Fenika

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85% is plenty sweet when you are used to having a low sugar diet. Let the chocolate preference wars begin! ;)
 

Alessandra Kelley

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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.

Hershey's moved a bunch of plants to Mexico -- not China -- in 2008.

I got that burning in the throat feeling from Hershey's chocolate long before that.

***

Ewww. I just did research.

Hershey's apparently has a special technique to make milk chocolate cheaper than anybody else, since it can use -- er -- unfresh milk.

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.

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.

Because ...

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),
other chocolate manufacturers now simply add butyric acid to their milk chocolates.

Yuck.

Yuck.

Yuck.

No wonder European chocolate is so much better.
 

Adam

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...

I'm sticking with my Brit choc. :tongue


85% is plenty sweet when you are used to having a low sugar diet. Let the chocolate preference wars begin! ;)


I have far too much sweet stuff in my diet, then. :D
 

Alessandra Kelley

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I am reminded of that lovely Terry Pratchett quote from Thief of Time about the Guild of Confectioners.

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.”

I do like Cadbury chocolate and am rather fond of Charbonnel et Walker assortments, peculiar as they are (two types of English chocolate there). My favorite chocolates are Lindt, Guittard, Valrhona, and Godiva. I find Ghirardelli and Scharffen Berger to be too burnt-flavored, like Starbuck's coffee.

I don't much care for milk chocolate -- I suspect because of Hershey's -- but Ritter Sport makes a lovely milk chocolate bar (they're German).
 

Fins Left

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I mis-communicated. I did know that it wasn't made in China. My point was that other countries have different regulations and I was giving the China baby formula as an example.

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.

So, when I thought those Hershey bars were making me gag, it was just a natural reflex or the actual chocolate bar that I was tasting. Can't wait to tell my nieces and nephews about this one. I'm always telling them about the gross stuff in food (like the maximum allowable maggots in canned mushrooms -- uh, that would be 20 -- of any size)
 

Ari Meermans

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I'm milk chocolate all the way; hubby loves dark. If anyone is interested, Lindt makes the best-tasting chocolate bunnies out there.
 

backslashbaby

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Pretty much anything even vaguely chocolate-flavored does it for me :) Even those frozen diet treats; does anyone know the ones I mean?

Certain chocolate (usually Belgian or Swiss) is positively orgasmic. Its better than many orgasms, now that I think about it :D

I used to walk in my sleep and find the chocolates in the house, so you know I have it bad!
 

BunnyMaz

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Blech, I hate when companies think they can sell the shittest quality chocolate by packaging it up for Easter and the like.

Treat yourself to this guy. Given how thick the ears tend to be on normal-size lindt bunnies, you could probably make a meal out of one ear on this guy.
 

Gravity

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About five miles from where we live is a little confectioners' company called Fawn Candy. They've been there for better than fifty years, and are true artisans. They make their stuff in small batches from old recipes, and it's absolutely killer. Their milk chocolate makes Hersheys takes like roofing tar, while their dark ... well, now I'm jonesing for some.

Who started this friggin' thread, anyway? :D
 

jennontheisland

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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.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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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.

Callebaut chocolate is kind of flat and lacking nuance, to my taste. I prefer Lindt, or a mix of Lindt and Guittard for baking and candymaking. There's also a Blommer chocolate factory downtown (gentrification kind of caught it up -- it used to be in a manufacturing district) which sells several types of pretty good chocolate in bulk.

Agreement, Hershey's is the bottom of the barrel.