Why We Save The Best Chocolate Piece For Last
Ed O’Brien, a researcher in social psychology at the University of Michigan, came up with the paper. He claims that our choices depend on the moment and also personal taste. Also, an essential circumstance here is knowing the end of an experience.
Based on O’Brien’s concept, endings and last chances have a different allure. He said: “I think in everyday life we do have this expectation that we save the best for last.”
“When people are given awareness that something is about to end, they’re kind of motivated to make the most of that experience,” he added.
Does it even have something to do with little stuff like savoring the last piece of chocolate? To verify the idea, O’Brien together with other researchers called for 52 students on the University of Michigan campus and requested them to be involved in a taste test.
Such students tried out different kinds of Hershey’s Kisses from caramel to almond to dark chocolate. Following the taste test, these students were required to rate their most favorite.
“So we had a big bag of candy that was covered from the outside and you couldn’t see what was in it or how many [chocolates were there],” he said.
Some of the students did not have any clue that the fifth chocolate was going to be their last one. In such case, the participants claimed that the last piece of chocolate they were able to taste was their favorite about 22% of the time.
On the other hand, another group of student was clued in that the fifth piece was going to be their “last.” And O’Brien suggests that such awareness about how the entire experience was ending somehow forced them to savor the chocolate even better.
He said: “The majority of people [64 percent] chose it as their favorite even though we’d randomly distributed the flavors,” .
Many studies have shown that the last things are actually more powerful. Why, you may ask. They usually are the freshest in our thoughts, that’s why. And O’Brien believes that the last-is-best thinking might be applied to romance and relationships.
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Couverture Chocolate Tidbits
Chocolates are always alluring and they are such a pain to resist. How much more if they’re made out of even higher amounts of cocoa butter than the usual one? You love the mouth-feel of chocolate melting on the tongue, don’t you? Imagine that being intensified. Yes, that.
Couverture chocolate is an extraordinary type of high-quality chocolate being used by chocolate companies and chocolate makers. It offers an even richer and creamier consistency than regular chocolate because more cocoa butter is put in. After proper tempering, you come up with a more polished and glossier chocolate with a crisper “snap” when broken. It’s ideally used for coating, molding, garnishing and dipping.
Not more than 100 companies worldwide produce couverture chocolate. Some of these companies produce only for their own private usage, while others sell their products to other chocolatiers who don’t have the capacity to make their own.
Couverture chocolate outshines the ordinary chocolate with its exceptional characteristics.
Among those is the quality. Couverture chocolate makers’ sources are the chocolate scouts who go around the world to find the best cacao beans, and careful study is being done for them to achieve the perfect bean blend for that exceptionally distinct flavor profile.
To be called as couverture, the chocolate must hold 32 to 39% of cocoa butter and the total percentage of the cocoa butter and the cocoa solids should be at least 54%.
Couverture chocolate is way too different from confectionery chocolate or compound chocolate sine these products have a much lesser amount of cocoa butter. More to these, some of them even contain vegetable/coconut/palm oil, hydrogenated fats, as well as artificial chocolate flavoring.
Couverture chocolate is suggested not to be mixed in with any other ingredients because of its high price and quality. It is built to stand out alone as an ingredient. It is ideal for chocolate fountains since the cocoa butter acts as a lubricant to avoid clumping of the chocolate and getting stickier than what is ideal.
If you want to give it a try, you can get samples from the makers to get the flavor profile you personally like since couverture chocolates have different tastes depending on where the beans came from and the process they undergo.
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Chocolate and Beer Festival
Are you going to be anywhere near Richmond, California on February 6? If so, you might want to try out the Chocolate and Beer Festival at Craneway Pavilion!
I don’t usually think about Chocolate and Beer as the best combination, but why not? Take some fine chocolates, pair with some great beers, and you might be on to a great taste sensation!
Here’s a summary page:
http://events.sfgate.com/richmond-ca/events/show/97185485-chocolate-and-beer-festival
And a site for more information:
http://www.craneway.com/chocolatebeer/
Enjoy!
Categories: chocolate articles, chocolate events Tags: chocolate and beer, chocolate tasting
From the Bean to the Bar
There is much more to making fine chocolate than picking a cacao bean and cooking it. Going from tree to chocolate bar takes a special touch to achieve the perfection you’re looking for.
Bean selection is the first step in making chocolate. If the bean chosen isn’t of high quality, the end result will be a less than desirable chocolate. Therefore, many fine chocolate makers take time to personally select the best beans.
Once a chocolatier selects the beans they are roasted. The roasting process has a great impact on the finished flavor. After roasting, the beans are put into a grinding process. The pulverized mass is called chocolate liquor and is turned into the actual chocolate.
To create the final chocolate bar from chocolate liquor, sugar and other ingredients are added to the liquor. Then another grinding process called refining is begun. Refining crushes everything and helps ensure that that the chocolate bar doesn’t have a grainy feeling in your mouth. Following the refining process, the mix is cooked and stirred in a process called conching. This step can take place over a few hours or days. It is at this point that chocolate begins to take on the flavor that most chocoholics love.
After conching, cocoa butter can be added to change the flow. Then the chocolate can be put into its final form, liquid or solid. If the final product is in solid form it must be tempered. Then it is packaged and shipped. If it took the form of a chocolate bar, now it’s finally ready for you to purchase and eat. Yum.
For a fun and tasty chocolate education visit Chocolate University Online.
