Hersheys Chocolate

The Chocolate Connoisseur July 31st, 2007

The Hershey chocolate company as known today was founded in 1894. The founder was Milton Hershey, an already known candy manufacturer. Mr. Hershey started his business making caramel candies and then decided to coat the caramels with chocolate. In approximately 1900, the idea and inspiration for creating other chocolate treats was born and the company was located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As the business grew, Mr. Hershey moved his business to a large facility located in southern Pennsylvania, which is now known today as Hershey, Pennsylvania.

One of the best-known products from the Hershey line of chocolates is the Hershey Kisses. The recognizable foil-wrapped Kiss became a trademark product in 1924. Other products were introduced throughout the years. In 1925 Mr. Goodbar was created; in 1926 Hershey’s chocolate syrup was produced; the idea of chocolate chips for baking was bought to the consumer’s attention in 1928; followed in 1938 by the introduction of the Krackel bar. The Hershey Company provided chocolate to another company then known as the H.B. Reese Company. This company made peanut butter cups, which were coated with chocolate. At that time they were called Penny Cups. The Reese Peanut Butter Cup has been enjoyed for more than 75 years and after the death of Mr. Reese in 1956 Mr. Hershey purchased the company. From 1968 onwards, The Hershey Company has acquired many other companies including Delmonico Foods, Roundtree Mackintosh, Y and S Company, responsible for providing Twizzler’s licorice, and Ronzoni’s Foods, to name but a few.
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The History of Chocolate

The Chocolate Connoisseur February 27th, 2007

Discovered over two thousand years ago, the Aztec and Maya people made chocolate from the pod seeds of the cacao tree, which they created into frothy, spicy, bitter drinks. In both Aztec and Maya religious and royal events, chocolate played an important role as priests offered cacao seeds to the gods during sacred ceremonies and served chocolate drinks. Spanish explorers discovered this Aztec custom and shipped cacao tree seeds back to Spain. Chocolate was an expensive import, so for the next three hundred or so years it was an elite beverage enjoyed only by the upper classes of Europe. They designed luxuriant silver and porcelain serving cups and pieces for drinking chocolate that represented symbols of the power and wealth of society’s upper crust. In the mid seventeen-hundreds, after hundreds of years of remaining relatively unaltered, new chocolate making innovations changed the very future of chocolate. In the industrial age new machinery was able to mass produce solid chocolate making this wonderful treat affordable to just about all of the general public.

Early in the seventeen-hundreds a Frenchman invented the hydraulic machine, followed by another French inventor who developed the steam-driven chocolate machine. This steam-driven mill allowed mass-production of huge amounts of chocolate quickly and inexpensively. With these new machines chocolate was no longer an oily, gritty paste but became a creamier, smoother chocolate. In 1828, the cocoa press, invented by a Dutch chemist named Coenraad Van Houten, was able to make powder or cocoa by squeezing out all the cocoa butter, thus making the cocoa uniform and far less expensive to produce. To powdered chocolate, Van Houten also added alkaline salts, making it mix with water better and giving it a milder flavor and darker color. In 1875, Henri Nestlé and Daniel Peter joined forces and combined chocolate and condensed milk, creating a creamy, smooth milk chocolate. It did not take long for this to become increasingly popular.

As culinary experimentation continued, instead of just using chocolate in hot drinks and candy bars, people started using cocoa powder in desserts, cakes and other foods. In North America, around the American Revolution, the Bakers Chocolate Company began manufacturing chocolate on a huge scale, while the Dutch produced a fine-grained powder, which they called the ‘Dutching’ method and which is still popular today with chocolate connoisseurs. They soon began making chocolate into such things as various types of candies, moldable treats, baked goods and chocolate truffles. The first recipe for brownies, published toward the end of the nineteenth century in the Sears Roebuck Catalogue, is still a beloved American baked good. Chocolate has continued to increase in popularity over the years, with the average Swiss adult eating approximately twenty pounds and the Americans eating approximately twelve pounds of chocolate annually.