This intriguingly specific Day celebrates a particular combination of flavors – dark, bitter chocolate and toasted almonds. It’s National Bittersweet Chocolate With Almonds Day. This is one of the oldest recipes involving chocolate known in the English-speaking world, featuring as the only chocolate dish in an 18th-century cookbook. The Day stands alongside Milk Chocolate with Almonds Day.
- Chocolate manufacturers use 40% of the worlds almonds (2008).
- California produced 998 million pounds of almonds in 2004. The largest crop on record was in 2002, with 1.084 billion pounds.
- It takes 1000 pounds of almonds to make 1 pint of almond oil.
- It takes approximately 400 cacao beans to make one pound (450 gr.) of chocolate.
- The world’s largest almond factory is in Sacramento, California. It processes 2 million pounds of almonds a day.
- Japanese teenagers enjoy snacking on a mixture of dried sardines and slivered almonds.
- Ancient Mesoamericans used roasted, crushed cacao beans to treat sicknesses and even kidney stones. Due to dark chocolate’s health benefits, it was used to treat a wide variety of illnesses at the time. Even before scientists understood the specific health benefits, the wealthy in ancient times did. The few that could afford to have chocolate on a daily basis managed better than people who couldn’t afford to eat the delectable cacao.
- In America, bittersweet chocolate starts around 70% or more of cacao. Higher percentages of cacao lower the amount of sugar in your chocolate, but usually raise the amount of cocoa butter used. This ratio of cacao to sugar determines if it is bittersweet, semi-sweet, or sweetened. If you decide to add fine dark chocolate to your routine, make sure it’s true dark chocolate. Sometimes milk chocolate will have food coloring to make it look like dark chocolate. Checking the cacao percentage is probably best.
- Chocolate syrup was used for blood in the famous 45 second shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, “Psycho” which actually took 7 days to shoot.
- There are about 5 to 10 milligrams of caffeine in one ounce of bittersweet chocolate, 5 milligrams in milk chocolate, and 10 milligrams in a six-ounce cup of cocoa; by contrast, there are 100 to 150 milligrams of caffeine in an eight-ounce cup of brewed coffee. You would have to eat more than a dozen chocolate bars, for example, to get the amount of caffeine in one cup of coffee.
- A single chocolate chip provides sufficient food energy for an adult to walk 150 feet; hence, it would take about 35 chocolate chips to go a mile, or 875,000 for an around-the-world hike.
- One click of a mouse burns 0.0000024 kcals of energy, so if you eat a chocolate bar, you’ll need to click your mouse 765,551,000 times to burn it off.
- The smell of chocolate increases theta brain waves, which triggers relaxation
- The English chocolate company Cadbury made the first chocolate bar in the world in 1842.
- M&Ms were created in 1941 as a means for soldiers to enjoy chocolate without it melting.
- Nutella was invented during WWII, when an Italian pastry maker mixed hazelnuts into chocolate to extend his cocoa supply.
- So many Toblerone bars are sold each year that, if they were to be laid end to end, they would go on for 62,000 kilometers (38,525 miles) which longer than the circumference of the Earth.
- There is a rare fourth kind of chocolate in addition to the classic milk, dark, and white varieties: blond chocolate.
- Eating dark chocolate every day reduces the risk of heart disease by one-third.
- Dark chocolate may improve blood flow and lower blood pressure.
- Dark chocolate is a powerful source of antioxidants.
- Dark chocolate may also improve the function of the brain.
- The film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was financed by Quaker Oats to promote its new Wonka Bar candy. This is also why the film is called “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” instead of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” like the book it’s based on.
- One ounce of bittersweet chocolate or cocoa contains 10% of the daily recommended intake of iron.
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