Blogs
Maybe not! Listing common ingredients in "chocolate" that could be inducing symptoms. Do you or a friend suffer from the following?
It's all at The Chocolate Tourist blog .
Potomac is thefirst chocolate maker I ever interviewed. My friend Valerie and I met Ben Rasmussen and got to watchhim make chocolate. From scratch.
A one-man bean to bar maker with a childlike joy in the process of making good chocolate!
As I have since 2007 I am once again researching theobromine and caffeine in cacao.
Starting with this study:
"HPLC Determination of Methylxanthines and Polyphenols Levels In Cocoa and Chocolate Product"
http://www.ukm.my/mjas/v7_n2/14Nazaruddin.pdf
I am going to add to this as I go along and learn more so I will warn you in advance that it will be rambling and not very well organized. Someday I hope to have my conclusions more organized.
Excerpt from the abstract:
"imported chocolate, the mean theobromine and caffeine levels respectively were 1.05 mg/g and 0.12 mg/g in dark chocolate; 0.76 mg/g and 0.04 mg/g in milk chocolate; and 0.74 mg/g and 0.03 mg/g in white chocolate"
Questions:
1) what does "imported" refer to?
2) What is the percentage of the cacao in this "dark" chocolate? Certainly the higher the percentage the greater the amount of theobromine.
3) How does white chocolate have any theobromine in it?
Disclaimer: I have not yet read the whole article, so these questions may already be answered there.
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Also learning more about theobromine from "Theobromine" at
http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol51/mono51-12.pdf
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Will post this now and add more later...
Please feel free to comment, and especially to add references to any definitive studies that you know of.
Cacao is endemic in the locality of Maria Aurora. In the neighborhood of Brgy. Diaat alone, cacao trees are grown in backyards. I was even shown of one resilient and abundantly fruiting cacao that is precariously thriving on a rocky ground on one end of the bridge just on top of its abutment. The tree appears like dangling on a cliff above the rushing water. In other locations close by the river are some tall cacao trees that are intercropped with coconut and other trees. The trees are more than five years old and showing some of the common cacao diseases.
So what was the inspiration for setting up the farm? Below is a quote from Mr. Fabros:
When I went home in 2012, I saw many folks are jobless and just hanging around in our barangay (village). Also, I felt like that some of the amount we give as investment for the family business back home are going nowhere. Some of our properties remain idle so I started reading about High Value Crops and cacao got my attention. I did research on the internet and communicated with some cacao players. And was frustrated BIG TIME with government's lack of reply to my queries. When I consulted a friend about cacao growing and believes in the profitability of the project, that's when Fabros Farm started. I have high hopes about this project. It is a very ambitious and daring and I credit my brothers effort. They are all absorbing the stress and pressure from me. I hope someday, it will not only my family that will benefit but the rest of the folks in our barangay. When the cacaos are fruiting and we have added income, it is my plan to do "contract growing, intercropped with coconut" with or without government assistance.
Fabros Farm'spioneering spirit and noble goal of providing livelihood to the people of their barangay is laudable. Despite the many challenges and their lack of experience, the family enterprise make up for it with their collective effort and enthusiasm to see to it that their venture succeed. With its humongous size Fabros Farm is not just a cacao farm but a cacao forest full of potentials.
Read more here - http://pinoychocophile.blogspot.com/2014/05/fabros-farm-more-than-just-cacao-farm.html
I tried many times make chocolate ,it will not come solid stage.it's coming liquid.whenever i kept outsite of freezer will come liquid stage.How to make solid stage.Please advice to me.
The Chocolate Tasting Kit: A Great Way to Unleash Your Inner Connoisseur
By Lisabeth Flanagan, 2014-04-28
Have you seen the new kit for tasting chocolate by my fellow Canadian,Eagranie Yuh? At first I didn't think I needed it, but then I saw the value for both new and experienced chocolate tasters. In fact, I might include it in chocolate tasting sessions, offer it as a draw prize to participants or even include it in the price of the workshop. I've tested it out and written all about it on my blog, check it out on The Ultimate Chocolate Blog : http://ultimatechocolateblog.blogspot.ca/2014/04/the-chocolate-tasting-kit-great-way-to.html .
Chocolate was first enjoyed as a drink. Mash up some cocoa beans, add water and some other exciting ingredients (sugar, spices, corn) and yum, its dessert for kings and queens.
But now we usually eat chocolate in a bar. Did you ever wonderhow that came to be? No? Well, Ill tell you anyway. Read all about it.
I subscribed to Standard Cocoa's monthly chocolate delivery service, and my first box contained Middlebury Chocolates! Small batches ofhandmade bean to bar chocolate.
Good stuff!
It took me a while to go through Amsterdam's chocolatiers with detailed blog posts . There's always personal favorites... and I knew from the beginning which was my number one chocolatier in town (although I like some other places quite a lot, too!). Anyway, when it comes to pralines/bonbons/chocolates, my favorite is: Metropolitan . Most notably: they are one of the VERY few chocolatiers that actually make their own chocolate from bean to bar! Delicious!
Cacao sense is common sense
Most of our practices are based on common sense, keen observations and experiences gained throughout the years of our operations. In the farm, we have existing shade trees, like madre de kakaw and the big grasses served also as shade. Since our seedlings were being transported from another place we made sure that the seedlings recovered first, before they get re-planted. We even dug deeper and wider holes using our invented hole digger for planting the trees. Our approach to pest is more of an integrated pest management. Most of the time we use organic inputs, but as a balance, we also use chemical pesticides, herbicides, and weedicides, especially, at that time when the cacao seedlings were still growing. Through time we have learned the life cycle of insects. We also learned when and where to spray, and where these insects hide during day time. We had a very bad experience on grafted cacao trees. Of the 100 field grafted cacao seedlings, only one survived. So we stopped grafting and let the cacao seedlings grow naturally. Besides, the life span of un-grafted seedlings is longer than the grafted ones. We are also particular at record keeping. We have assigned one of our workers in monitoring and filling data of the farm journal we devised. It contains information as to their daily, weekly and monthly tasks. That way, we can keep track of their output and can also know the status of the cacao trees. At first, we even kept data of the weight of the harvested pods including its thickness; weight of beans, before and after mucilage is removed; the weight of beans before and after fermentation; and weight loss before and after drying the beans.
Read more here - http://pinoychocophile.blogspot.com/2014/04/cacao-sense-story-of-dingayan-cacao-farm.html
Dingayan Cacao Farm prides itself for the cleanest cacao beans in Lasam, Cagayan, Philippines.
Contact Info: