Eat Chocolate & Learn to Program a Shopping Cart using PHP and MySQL
A recent photo of my partner outside the shop:)...if she looks familiar I think it's probably just a coincidence. Julie will be on hand at our grand opening, giving out some of her wonderfully exotic hand-made Chocolat! creations...sign up for our newsletter (coming soon) and we'll notify you when the festivities will begin.
Chocolat!
The word "chocolate" comes from the Aztecs of Mexico, and is derived from the Nahuatl word xocolatl which is a combination of the words, xocolli, meaning "bitter", and atl, which is "water". The Aztecs associated chocolate with Xochiquetzal, the goddess of fertility. Chocolate is also associated with the Maya god of fertility. Mexican philologist Ignacio Davila Garibi proposed that "Spaniards had coined the word by taking the Maya word chocol and then replacing the Mayan term for water, haa, with the Aztec term, atl." However, it is more likely that the Aztecs themselves coined the term, having long adopted into Nahuatl the Mayan word for the "cacao" bean; the Spanish had little contact with the Maya before Cortés' early reports to the Spanish King of the beverage known as xocolatl. William Bright noted that the word xocoatl does not occur in early Spanish or Nahuatl colonial sources.
For hundreds of years, the chocolate making process remained unchanged. When the people saw the Industrial Revolution arrive, many changes occurred that brought about the food today in its modern form. In the 1700s, mechanical mills were created that squeezed out cocoa butter, which in turn helped to create hard, durable chocolate.
Dark chocolate is produced by adding fat and sugar to the cacao mixture. The U.S. Government calls this "sweet chocolate", and requires a 15% concentration of chocolate liquor. European rules specify a minimum of 35% cocoa solids. Dark chocolate, with its high cocoa content, is a rich source of the flavonoids epicatechin and gallic acid, which are thought to possess cardioprotective properties. Dark chocolate has also been said to reduce the possibility of a heart attack when consumed regularly in small amounts. Semisweet chocolate is a dark chocolate with a low sugar content. Bittersweet chocolate is chocolate liquor to which some sugar (typically a third), more cocoa butter, vanilla and sometimes lecithin have been added. It has less sugar and more liquor than semisweet chocolate, but the two are interchangeable in baking. Unsweetened chocolate is pure chocolate liquor, also known as bitter or baking chocolate. It is unadulterated chocolate: the pure, ground, roasted chocolate beans impart a strong, deep chocolate flavor.