Hints on Cooking Light Chocolate Desserts

You don't have to sacrifice flavor when eating low-calorie, even with chocolate! Cocoa adds a deep flavor and is low in fat, sodium, and cholesterol

*Look for recipes specifying skim or low-fat. Don't substitute unless the recipe specifies it.

* Try whipping chilled evaporated skim milk as a garnish!

Baking with Cocoa

Cocoa keeps very well if it is stored at room temperature in its original container. It retains its freshness and quality almost indefinitely without refrigeration.

How you substitute cocoa into your favorite recipes:

For baking chocolate. use 3 level tablespoons cocoa plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to equal one square of unsweetened chocolate.

For pre-melted chocolate, use 3 level tablespoons cocoa plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to equal 1 ounce pre-melted unsweetened chocolate.

Mass-Producing Milk Chocolate Products

To make any chocolate products, chocolate liquor and cocoa butter are combined with other ingredients (like sugar and milk) to create various tastes and textures. Cocoa butter melts at 89-93 F, which is why it melts in your mouth. To continue, pasteurized milk is mixed with sugar sugar until it is thick like taffy. Chocolate liquor is then mixed and dried into a powder known as "chocolate crumb".

Cocoa butter is added to the crumb, then is ground by steel rollers.

The mixture gradually gets smoother until it becomes a thick liquid called "chocolate paste".

Within 1 to 3 days in vats called "conches", granite rollers work to get the right texture through a process called "conching". Below is an old-time diagram of a conching machine.

The last step is tempering, which is a melting and cooling process that stabilizes the crystals in the cocoa butter. This gives chocolate both a shine and a nice snap.

From Cacao Beans to Cocoa Powder

Cacao beans come from the cacao trees in tropical jungles. The trees have very large pods with 20 to 50 seeds in each (cocoa/cacao beans). It takes roughly 400 beans to make a pound of chocolate.

When the seeds/beans are first harvested, they are soft. So they are laid out to dry, in a process called fermentation. The color darkens and the flavor develops.

At the factory, beans are sorted by country of origin due to their distinctive tastes and are later combined to create a signature mix (in the case of Hershey).

The factory process then begins. First is a spin in the revolving roaster, which develops the flavor of the beans. Beneath this photo is a photo of the old-time roaster.

The roasted beans are then shattered to separate the shell from the nib, which is the part with all the flavor.

The nibs are then milled and ground until they release chocolate liquor (which contains no actual alcohol).

Under pressure, roughly 1/2 the vegetable fat (cocoa butter) can be extracted from the liquor.

This leaves the solids, which are pressed into a cake. This can later be smashed to make cocoa powder!

The Biography of Milton Hershey

Milton Hershey was born in Derry Township in 1857 to his parents, Henry and Fannie. Milton dropped out of school after the 4th grade and at age 14, went to work. He worked at a job he HATED at a newspaper, then got a job with a candy maker.

After 4 years, he started his own taffy shop in Philly and it stayed open for 6 years. He then went to Denver and learned how to melt caramels.

After 10 years and a lot of failure, Hershey returned to Pennsylvania in 1886 (age 29) and borrowed money from his mom's family to open Lancaster Caramel Company (shown below). By 1894, his "Crystal A" caramels had made him a rich and respected man.

In 1893, Hershey became enamored with chocolate while at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. There he bought some machinery to help him make chocolates.

The recipe he used back then is most like the Hershey's Special Dark bar we know and love today.

At first, chocolate was just used to cover caramel but it quickly came to the forefront as a star player. The earliest products were lots of chocolate treats in a variety of shapes and designs, everything from cigars to "Princess wafers". However, Hershey was still unable to perfect milk chocolate.

In 1900, after lots of determination and experimentation, the inexpensive (a nickel!), the Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar debuted and was insanely popular!

Hershey did a lot of his experimenting on the farm where he was born (now known as "the Homestead"). He had sold it in the 1860s to pay off debt, but bought it back in 1897!

Hershey then sold his Lancaster Caramel Company for $1 million so he could focus on manufacturing milk chocolate. The "Great American Chocolate Bar" was born.

At this point, Hershey needed to expand to meet demand, including a bigger factory, more equipment, more employees, and more milk!

After exploring around, Hershey moved his whole set-up in 1905 right back to Derry Township

Why Hershey?

I'm sure, as I'm typing out these long posts about Hershey, people would wonder why exactly someone who runs a candy store with home-made hand-dipped candy would want to pay homage to a mass-produced assembly-line multi-million dollar chocolate business.

Honestly, I believe that if there is any company and any leader to look up to, it would be Hershey and the honorable Milton Hershey. He started from very humble beginnings and, doing what he loved, he built up a massive business.

Not only that but once Milton had his success, he used his money for charity, schools, hospitals, etc. Anything he could do to pay it forward!

Other Hershey Innovations

Milton Hershey created a school for children in need!

There is also a world-class teaching hospital & medical center

Here is the famous Hershey Lodge

And the Hershey Campground!

Hershey also has a 23-acre public garden!

And don't forget their very own hometown American Hockey League team