The Chocolate Pole er Poll

[joe yang]

So what's your pleasure?

[elder999]

I like it all-it's my one true weakness. I could go without tequila for months, but I gotta have chocolate.

I voted for "milk," though, preferably Godiva-the one thing I count on for Christmas and my birthday.:p

...and you shrould stike "white chocolate" from the poll, white chocolate originates from the cocoa (cacao) plant, but it is not 'chocolate.' According to the FDA, to be called 'chocolate' a product must contain chocolate liquor, which is what gives it's bitter intense chocolate flavor (and color) to dark and milk chocolates.

White chocolate's primary component is cocoa butter, which has very lttle chocolate flavor. In fact, white chocolate tastes an awful lot like I'd imagine $hit to taste, or, at the very least, like sweetened petroleum jelly-yechhh!

[william northcote]

Me too. I love chocolate. Black forest gateaux, Yorkie, Mars Bar, Reisen (chocolate is nice, but not a fave at mo).

I once ate a whole bar of 80% cocoa solids for cooking. Anything over 75% is a good chocolate for coking with.

Oh and also chocolate drink like Cadbury's options mint as well as orange made with warmed milk. Good drinking late at night. :D ;)

[Shitoryu Dude]

Overall I'd have to say that Hershey's milk chocolate is about the best mass-produced chocolate on the planet. Taste tests done over the last century back me up on this; nothing else really gets the demand that Hershey's does. I'm something of a chocoholic and have tried chocolate in so many variations and from so many places that I can't keep track of it.

Hand-crafted and specialty chocolates are another matter and that depends entirely upon the craftsman turning it out.

:beer:

[elder999]

Originally posted by Shitoryu Dude
Hand-crafted and specialty chocolates are another matter and that depends entirely upon the craftsman turning it out.

:beer:

This from the home of Dilettante Chocolates (http://dilettante.com/), descended from the Imperial Chocolatier to Czar Nicholas II?

Wasn't particularly impressed with the stuff myself, but it seems like every chocoholic from Seattle raves about it.....it's okay.

[Shitoryu Dude]

Bleh - my wife loves the stuff, I think it is 2nd rate. But then, she was raised on the stuff thinking it was something special.

:beer:

[Julian Gerhart]

Dilettante is special. especialy compared to that hersheys trash. you were kidding right?

[Shitoryu Dude]

No, Dilletante chocolate is only so-so. I can easily think of many much better chocolates I've had over the years. For some odd reason everyone in Seattle thinks that Dilletante is something awesome, but nobody else thinks so. Just like Starbuck's makes crappy coffee, but everyone in Seattle goes there for a latte' and says how great it is.

I'm not saying that Hershey's is the best chocolate, only the best mass produced chocolate - huge difference.

:beer:

[Brian Owens]

Like all matters of taste, what you like is what you like. Within the limits of reason, there's no such thing as good or bad, only what you like or don't like.

Personally, I like Dilettante, but I like Toicher (spelling?) better.

I agree that, when it comes to mass produced chocolates, Hershey's takes the prize.

[Rogier]

anyone ever try the Dutch Verkade chocolate?

[william northcote]

European chocolates are more beter tasting than UK mass produced from Nestle and Cadburys. Something to do with less fat and more milkand/or cocoa solids, or something along those lines.

[monkeyboy_ssj]

Originally posted by Will Northcote
European chocolates are more beter tasting than UK mass produced from Nestle and Cadburys. Something to do with less fat and more milkand/or cocoa solids, or something along those lines.

Yeah dude, Lindt is a very nice chocolate, but sometimes some fruit & nut goes down a treat.

But Harv? Hershey's? Blearg! When I send Peter Knox some chocolate from England on the 23rd I'll send you some too ;) PM address if interested, it's all free :D

Cheers

[william northcote]

Originally posted by monkeyboy_ssj
Yeah dude, Lindt is a very nice chocolate, but sometimes some fruit & nut goes down a treat.

But Harv? Hershey's? Blearg! When I send Peter Knox some chocolate from England on the 23rd I'll send you some too ;) PM address if interested, it's all free :D

Cheers

Send me some too :D

[monkeyboy_ssj]

Originally posted by william northcote
Send me some too :D

I'll send you a Kinder Egg with no toy inside :p

Cheers

[joe yang]

Hershey's is good and getting better. Tobler, Cadburry, Lindt, all good. Heath bars rule. What ever happend to Drust?

What does Seatle know? Real chocholate is generic "break up"in a wooden barrel, from a wholesaler on Orchard street. Latte and capuccino are something you give kids in an Italian pastry shop. Real espresso come in a ceramic cup. You can't rub a twist on a paper cup. And a "real" espresso bar is small, gloomy and dark. The waitress looks like Cher. She is reading "War and Peace" on the job because Joyce is beneath her, and you are too!

[william northcote]

Originally posted by monkeyboy_ssj
I'll send you a Kinder Egg with no toy inside :p

Cheers

Okay send me the white bits along with the chocolate. But the toy bit sucks.

Oh, and send it by e-mail ;)

[monkeyboy_ssj]

Originally posted by william northcote
Okay send me the white bits along with the chocolate. But the toy bit sucks.

Oh, and send it by e-mail ;)

I've just pushed it through the modem, should be there soon.

Cheers

[william northcote]

Okay I will let you know when I get it :D

[Shitoryu Dude]

Ghiradelli (sp) makes the best chocolate brownie mix that I have found. Made it to one of their outlets in California once and decided that pradice smelled like several tons of chocolate :) The hard part was not just stuffing myself until I was sick and picking out a few select items to savor.

In Port Gamble, Washington there is a small chocolate shop that turns out these golf ball sized chocolate and liquor truffles for a $1.50 each - we try to get one or two each every time we pass through on the way to our beach house.

There is a little shop in Madrid, Spain in the Plaza Mayor that sells "truffas" for about the same price - best we found in Spain, and we looked pretty hard. We brought a box home with us and they didn't last long.

:beer:

[monkeyboy_ssj]

Harv, you need to add Chocolate Connoisseur to your sig ;)

Truffles

Cheers

[Brian Owens]

Originally posted by joe yang
And a "real" espresso bar is small, gloomy and dark. The waitress looks like Cher. She is reading "War and Peace" on the job because Joyce is beneath her, and you are too!
That's not an "espresso bar" -- that's a classic "coffee house" right out of the beat generation.

Sheesh! Kids these days! No sense of history. ;)

Brian "Maynard G. Krebs" Owens

[Cady Goldfield]

"Like Water For Chocolate" was one of the steamiest movies I've ever seen in which everyone keeps his/her clothes on throughout.

Milk chocolate with high cocoa butter and cocoa liquor content. Mmm
Bittersweet chocolate with a slightly smokey or fruity flavor. Mmm

[Shitoryu Dude]

chocolate = food orgasm :eek:

[joe yang]

Yeah, I know it's a coffee house, I was just trying to be cool by slipping into the modern vernacular. And the best non candy chocolate, hands down, has to be a chocolate cake from the Prince Street Bar in NYC. And shock, the dirty secret is, it's made from a mix, which they screwed up some how, and invented a chocolate fudge bundt cake, with a wet brownie outside and a hot fudge center. Oh man. With a black coffee?!

[Shitoryu Dude]

I just gained five pounds!! Damn, that sounds yummy!!

There is a place here in Seattle called B&O Espresso serves up an outstanding selection of cakes and desserts in addition to fairly good coffee. The German Chocolate is by far the best in town, and they have a damned good carrot cake as well. The only drawback is that it is in the Capitol Hill area which means that parking is almost non-existant and you can watch drug deals go down across the street. Broadway on Capitol Hill is what I refer to as "Freak Steet" - home to every disaffected Yoko Ono wannabe goth and drag queen in the state.

:beer:

[joe yang]

Sounds like the perfect place for coffee and chocolate, what do you want, a food court in Sears?

[Chiburi]

Dark chocolate, 85-99%.

Cheers,