Last word on chocolate
"In 2012, two-thirds of the population ate some kind of chocolate in an average four weeks. In 2016, this had risen to 68.4 per cent. In sheer numbers, this represents almost 1 million more Australians eating chocolate in any four-week period."
So says the Australian Financial Review, which goes on to say that women eat more chocolate than men 70% versus 66.1% indulging once a month.
And I think the inference of the whole article was that in spite of Cadbury's Dairy Milk bar still being top of the pops, the real trend is towards the extravagant and the posh.
Hence the photo at left, where the weird looking lady on the right stands in her very expensive and apparently world-renowned chocolate shop in Paris, with perhaps some of the world's most expensive chocolate.
This trend is certainly in evidence if you visit an upmarket shopping centre like Doncaster which has several dedicated chocolatiers (as they like to call themselves today) as well as the cafés which have increasingly fancy pastries and chocolates on sale.
Off the top of my head I can think of Cacao, Koko Black, Xocolatl and Max Brenner with Haigh's, a long-time Melbourne institution and perhaps slightly less fancy, now racing to keep up with the trends. Which are single origin chocolate (you even see this in the supermarket in the chocolatebars on sale), 'panning' - coating things like nuts with chocolate, figurines and colour.
Melbourne is so in to chocolate that there are several chocolate tours that you can do. Red Balloon currently has around 30 options listed for chocolate related tours, tastings and workshops!
But these things are not for the poor. Nothing is, is it? They do say that in the dying days of any empire there is a trend towards decadence and luxury. Isn't that what is happening here? Maybe the world is so ghastly at the moment that we are escaping into fantasy with champagne and chocolate. Is it an indicator that our world is ending?
The reason for the article in a financial newspaper, by the way, was the dearth of properly qualified chocolatiers in Australia, leading to Cacao for one, importing two French chocolatiers. There exists no purely chocolate related course at the places where one does these courses - it's just part of a pastry chef course. Or you train them yourself in-house.
The chocolates themselves are horrendously expensive - priceless in fact - maybe $24.00 for nine individually chosen chocolates in a pretty box. So for special occasions only, surely. But you can always go to one of their shops have a cup of coffee - or chocolate - and indulge in one perhaps. Maybe that's what the yummy mummies do.
Promise to leave the subject of chocolate alone for a while!
