In observance, here are a few chocolate historical facts I bet you didn’t know;
In 1735 Benjamin Franklin sold chocolate out of his printing shop.
In 1842 the English chocolate company Cadbury made the world’s first chocolate candy bar.
In 1852 Sam German was the American that created the sweet dark baking chocolate bar for the Baker’s Chocolate Company. 5 years later a chocolate cake recipe using Baker’s chocolate was published in a Dallas newspaper adding a coconut and pecan frosting. And thus, the German Chocolate Cake was born, named for American Sam German and nothing to do with the country.
In 1907 Hershey’s Kisses were first made and shaped in squares. Their teardrop shape wrapped in foil with the paper plume didn’t happen until 1924. Today 80 million chocolate Kisses are produced each day.
In 1938, Ruth Wakefield invented chocolate chip cookies quite by accident. She thought that adding chocolate chunks to her cookie batter would result in chocolate cookies. Instead, she stumbled upon the recipe for what would become the world’s favorite cookie. Wakefield eventually sold the recipe to Nestlé Toll House in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate.
In 1941 Forrest Mars, Sr. (son of the Mars Company founder, Frank C. Mars) collaborated with Bruce Murrie (son of Hershey Chocolate president William F. R. Murrie). They developed a chocolate candy sold exclusively to the military in WWII. The little chocolate beads encased in a hard sugar shell were packaged in a small cardboard tube and could be carried in the pockets of soldiers as a lightweight, nutritious, high-energy snack.
Due to the hard candy coating they didn’t melt like traditional candy bars. Later each piece was imprinted with the letter M for the two creator’s initials and thus, the colorful M&M’s (standing for Mars and Murrie) were unleashed upon the world. 400 million M&M’s are produced every single day and sold in more than 100 countries. That’s a lot to melt in your mouth, not in your hands.
Celebrate this week by biting into your favorite chocolate cake, cupcake, pie, cookie, brownie or candy. And remember the four basic food groups; milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles.
It’s true, all you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.