Over the top with chocolate
“Your hand and your mouth agreed many years ago that, as far as chocolate is concerned, there is no need to involve your brain.”
Dave Barry
Well Easter is over and done with - the kids are back at school, everyone is back to work - but it lingers doesn't it, with all those Easter eggs and chocolates still to eat? You could, of course, be really good and give them away or ration yourself to a tiny piece each day. But, of course, we won't.
If looking at our little stash of chocolate each night is not enough, I also decided to flick through the last Coles and Woolworths magazines which were all about Easter of course, and I was so appalled really at some of the truly excessive chocolatey and Easter things I found in there that I thought I would share some of them with you. Looking at these pictures. Are you repelled or tempted?
I did pick the most excessive examples but honestly even the others were pretty damaging looking. Well I assume damaging, because of all the sugar and chocolate and cream involved. And you know, I could almost be tempted by this one on the left, not by the others though. I like gooey obviously.
Easter, in fact, has become a chocolate festival rather than a religious (or even pagan) one. There is chocolate in just about every shape or form that you can imagine, and the chocolate makers must depend on Easter for a large part of their profits.
As I previously wrote, Easter eggs have been around for a very long time, but not chocolate ones. Partly because there was no chocolate in Europe until the discovery of South America (another gift from that continent), but more importantly because the chocolate makers did not discover how to process the chocolate and mould it into the shapes we see today. This happened in the early nineteenth century, in France and Germany, and then with John Cadbury in England. Now though, the chocolate has spread to just about everything else we eat at Easter - resulting in these over the top chocolate extravaganzas.
And it doesn't stop with the chocolate. What about the hot-cross buns? Coles Magazine had some truly over the top ideas for what you could do with hot-cross buns.
To my mind they look pretty revolting and I really don't think I like the idea of ice-cream and hot-cross buns. The textures don't seem a good mix to me. Incidentally do we think we are now going to experience the disappearance of hot cross buns from the shops or will they continue making them all year?
Personally I think all of the above examples are enough to put you off chocolate for a very long time. But then I look at the box of exquisite chocolates that my sister sent me, the bar of toblerone (always a favourite), and the rather exquisite set of four small easter eggs my husband gave me and I'm not sure. I shall try and work my way through them slowly. Or is it better to just gorge and then give up chocolate for the rest of the year?
And a last word on the health properties of chocolate. In the health and wellness section of the Woolworths magazine was a recipe for these raw nut bars:
Doesn't look all that healthy to me in spite of all the macro organic this and that that is in it. They get away with it by using cacao not chocolate or cocoa. Chocolate itself is said to be good for you, but chocolate has been heated and processed and usually contains some sugar at least and some dairy as well. But it has antioxidant properties and does contain other good things. However, in the process of refinement some of the originally excellent enzymes and things are destroyed. Cacao apparently does not undergo the same heating process - the heat is what destroys the goodness. It's the same basic raw ingredient though - shown here, before processing. The white bit is cacao butter which is from the fatter part of the bean.
So cacao is basically raw chocolate and therefore better for you. The jury seems to be out on whether cooked cocoa destroys the enzymes as in cocoa. And I would guess that our Woolworths recipe above needs you to melt the cocoa. So not good. I've never tasted raw cacao so have no idea if it is as tasty as chocolate.
Anyway - guilt, guilt, guilt ...
