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With Halloween just weeks away and more holidays around the corner, chocolate has been a huge staple to celebrate the holidays. To the majority, chocolate is apart of our daily lives so why not learn some fun facts of chocolate!

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🍫 Chocolate was first consumed by drinking not eating. 90% of chocolate consumption history was drinking "hot chocolate".

🍫 September 13th is International Chocolate Day and Milton Hershey, founder of Hershey's chocolates birthday.

🍫 The chocolate industry is worth $110 billion per year.

🍫German chocolate cake is not from Germany. The cake is named after an American named Sam German who developed a sweet baking chocolate in 1952.

🍫100 pounds of chocolate are eaten each second in the United States.

🍫 The average person from Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, and Great Britain consumes 24 pounds of chocolate each year and China 99 grams of chocolate each year.

🍫Ghirardelli brand is the U.S. portion of swiss confectioner Lindt.

Photo Credit: americanhistory.si.edu

🍫The United Kingdom sells 200 million Cadbury Creme Eggs each year and produces 1.5 million a day.

🍫A week before Easter🐰 , Americans purchase 71 million pounds of chocolate candy, 48 million pounds for Valentine's Day💟 , and 90 million pounds for Halloween 🎃.

🍫Harry Barnett Reese, the founder of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups was a former Hershey employee and created the famous candy in the 1920's.

🍫The scientific name for the cacao tree is "Theobroma Cacao" which literally translates to "Cacao, food of the Gods".

🍫It takes the whole years crop from one cacao tree to produce a half kilo of cocoa.

🍫Milton Hershey, founder of Hershey's Chocolate company expanded so rapidly that Milton built an entire town for his employees to live in.

🍫Napoleon always had chocolate with him. He ate it as whenever he needed an energy boost.

🍫 Chocolate producers worldwide use an estimated 20% of the world's peanut crops and 40% of their almond crops.

Photo Credit: lindt-home-of-chocolate.com

🍫 In 2020, Lindt Chocolate introduced the world's largest chocolate fountain that pours from 30 feet high with 1,500 liters of real chocolate pouring into a giant Lindor truffle at their latest Lindt shop, museum and factory.

🍫 Rodolphe Lindt, founder of Lindt Chocolate invented the conche press

🍫It takes about 400 beans to produce a single pound of chocolate.

🍫Each cacao tree produces approximately 2,500 beans

🍫Nutella was invented during World War Two, when an Italian pastry chef mixed hazelnuts into chocolate to extend his cocoa supply.

🍫The French celebrate April Fool's Day with a chocolate shaped fish also known as "Poisson d'Avril"

Saving the best fun fact for last!

🍫CaCao Noel is named after the founders of Paris Gourmet, Xavier and Dominique Noel!

More Fun Facts About Chocolate:

Mental Floss - Food History of Chocolate

EatThis.com - Chocolate Facts

Mental Floss- 30 Facts About Chocolate

Insider.com -Worlds Largest Chocolate Fountain Opens At Lindt Chocolate

Mental Floss - 38 Sweet Facts About Candy

CandyUSA.com - Story of Chocolate

The more that things change, the more they stay the same

Tonight is the first night of Passover and Sunday is Easter, and this year the holidays will be celebrated far differently from years past. One thing that never changes is CHOCOLATE.

Chocolate and Easter

Of course, the chocolate has been a mainstay of secular Easter celebrations for over 150 years. Becasue the technology for pouring and moulding chocolate wasn't very advanced, the first chocolate eggs made in the early 1800's were solid dark chocolate and likely very grainy. But around 1828, Dutch chocolatier and chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten patented a process for separating cocoa powder from cocoa mass:

"The modern era of chocolate making began in 1828 when Van Houten patented his method for removing most of the cocoa butter from processed cacao, leaving a powdered chocolate. Untreated cocoa mass, or “liquor,” the end result of grinding cacao beans, contains about 53% cocoa butter. Van Houten invented a hydraulic press which reduced the amount to about 27%, leaving a cake that could be pulverized into a fine powder, which we know as cocoa. To improve this powder’s ability to mix with liquid, Van Houten treated it with alkaline salts, which came to be known as “Dutching.”

With the cocoa butter separated from the mass, chocolate makers now had a new and intriguing substance. Adding it to chocolate creates a creamier and more malleable product, making it supple enough to be molded into bars and more elaborate filled confections."  - Cornell University Library

It was British chocolatier J.S. Fry & Sons that produced the first chocolate Easter Egg. Two years later, Cadbury created the modern chocolate Easter egg after developing a pure cocoa butter that could be moulded into smooth shapes. By 1893 the company held patents on 19 different egg patterns  and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Chocolate and Passover

A limited and thoroughly unscientific poll (ie - asking my friends on FB) says that chocolate plays far less of a roll in secular celebrations of Passover. It seems that it mostly shows up in the form of chocolate covered matzo. Here's a great recipe for Matzo Toffee with Almonds from our friends at Serious Eats

There's also something that apparently brings back a flood of memories - something called Lollycones which are nothing more than melted chocolate on a stick. Several people said they "pretty much defined my childhood."

Whichever holiday you're celebrating, be safe, be healthy, and be thankful. And eat chocolate.