I don’t understand how they cant see that once we leave we leave. If you bite into that and hate it its a cycle broken and we we unlikely to trust the product ever again.
sepiroth154@feddit.nl
on 12 Mar 09:05
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i will have to give it up. it will be easier if its crap anyway. Learning to pay for what you actually want vrs you think you want are two different things.
There are plenty of companies still selling actual chocolate, and since it’s chocolate and not chocolate-flavoured sweets I think it’ll just become smaller and/or more expensive. Which is fine.
The thing is, they won't ALL do it. The big names will. Real chocolate will become more of a luxury thing you have less often (which, to be fair is probably a good thing) and the established brands might survive on some blind brand loyalty, or die out.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 11:14
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Ozempic!
RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip
on 12 Mar 12:19
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Not eating candy is always an option for adults with an ounce of self control.
ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip
on 12 Mar 13:10
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It’s what happened with Bassets Winegums. Used to be my absolute favourite candy. Wife came back from the UK with a box,I opened it and the taste was… Different. Googled - turns out they changed the recipe after being purchased by some large conglomerate. I haven’t had one of their candies since 13 years ago. Fucking idiots.
The cynic in me imagines that they switch away from real chocolate, everyone will hate it, they’ll release a new product line that proclaims it uses real chocolate, but charge a premium for it, and people will buy it.
Cadbury has been garbage for years now unfortunately.
Nusm@peachpie.theatl.social
on 12 Mar 11:16
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Cadbury ruined their best product, the Creme Egg, some time ago. It’s nothing like it used to be. A shame too, because they could raise the price and I still would have bought them, but as it is, I don’t remember the last time I had one.
Steve@startrek.website
on 12 Mar 13:08
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I remember when it changed from creamy to just sugar goop that makes my teeth hurt.
My local store instead had to discount them to 25 cents each. And that’s when I started buying them up!
ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip
on 12 Mar 13:40
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Have they finally admitted they made them smaller yet? They’re like half the size they used to be. Like a laughably noticable difference, but they’re still like 🤷♂️ you’re imagining things, same as always
Nusm@peachpie.theatl.social
on 12 Mar 15:50
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Oh they’re definitely smaller. Smaller and taste way worse… That should improve profits! 🤦🏻♂️
And the stupid plastic casing they now use. I can feel myself microdosing plastic just thinking about it.
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al
on 12 Mar 09:06
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Club, one of my childhood favourites with the advert song of “If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club” – no longer has enough cocoa to be legally called chocolate.
setsubyou@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 09:59
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I’ve had some products that use ChoViva (fake chocolate made from sunflower seeds and oats) and they were ok. On the other hand my only memory of Hershey’s chocolate is just pain, even 30 years ago (last time I was in the US). So maybe it’s not replacing cocoa as such that’s the problem.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
on 12 Mar 10:06
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Guys (and gals), there’s simple solution to all that: learn to bake.
We are a community of makers. We write our apps ourselves, we host our shit by ourselves, we stream our music and our movies by ourselves. So what should we do when bad corporations are taking away our snacks? Make them yourself!
Recipes are free and open. The tools are not expensive (not much RAM in the oven). There’s nothing stopping us.
So, do we need baking community?
Edit: So… !baking@lemmy.curiana.net ?
It’s my self hosted server. Will that work?
SpikesOtherDog@ani.social
on 12 Mar 10:15
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Yes. Host recipes. Get productive.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
on 12 Mar 12:00
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I recently made brownies from scratch, and they came out so much better than the box brownies that I usually make, that my entire family noticed, and really loved them. It wasn’t that much more work than the box, you just had to measure out the flour, sugar, and cocoa, but the difference was huge. Well worth the slight extra effort.
Did you use butter and milk or oil and water in the box mix? That’s usually the only difference. The box mix is just flour, cocoa powder, salt, etc. The quality of those ingredients doesn’t vary too much.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
on 12 Mar 14:26
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Butter yes, milk no.
I saw an old Good Eats episode where Alton Brown put the brownies in for about 15 minutes, took them out for 10 minutes, then put them back in the oven until they were finished. He claimed that the interruption changes the chemical reaction somehow, and makes them better. I’ve tried it in the past, and they seemed to be marginally better, but it m.not sure.
He frequently does things that make recipes 2% better for 50% more effort. Which is appreciated, but often a little silly. Sometimes though it is well worth it.
raynethackery@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 14:59
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Don’t leave us hanging. What’s the recipe?
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
on 12 Mar 15:02
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I don’t know, I found it on the Internet, they were all more or less the same.
Baking is relatively easy, but how do you make your own chocolate? I don’t think you can properly do that at home.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 12:59
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It can be done, but it’s not easy.
prodigalsorcerer@lemmy.ca
on 12 Mar 13:11
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I’ve seen recipes, which are basically just cocoa butter and cocoa powder, and they seem pretty simple, though I’ve never tried them.
Most chocolate “making” just starts with chocolate callets. Melt them, temper it, put it in moulds, and add filling. I’ve done this, and it’s not that difficult. Of course, the quality here depends on the quality of the callets, so if you start with Hershey’s (not sure if they even make callets), it’ll still taste like vomit.
You can, but you also don’t have to make it from scratch. Various forms of real, non-ultraprocessed-and-candified chocolate are guaranteed sitting lonely and forgotten in grocery store baking aisles around the world at this very moment. There’s also the option of finding a reputable local chocolatier, if you have one. I’ve never lived anywhere where there aren’t at least several local options, if not countless, but maybe I’m just lucky that way. Even if not, there’s always online ordering.
Cooking nerd here. You can kind of make your own chocolate.
You almost certainly can’t make chocolate from scratch. You could, in theory do all the steps but even in the old days it was an industrial process and it’s nearly impossible to get the quality control tight enough at home. The fermentation, roasting, and grinding steps all have to be done under very precise conditions or you won’t get good chocolate.
You could just go really old school and use the Aztec recipes but that’s not “chocolate” as most people would know it. It’s more like a spiced tea.
Home cooks can buy chocolate (it’s worth it to splurge and get nice chocolate if you’re going through this much trouble) and mix it and shape it. You can make a wide array of flavored ganaches, coat things in chocolate, fill chocolate shells with stuff, etc.
The hardest part is tempering. Chocolate is actually a crystal. The short version is that if you don’t control that crystal formation through careful temperature and movement control, your chocolate will get weird and chalky; if you get that all right it’s smooth and snappy. There are books and videos on it but you’ll need to mess up a bunch of batches before you learn it.
TherapyGary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 12 Mar 15:02
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ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
on 12 Mar 15:19
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Great, that exactly the voice I wrote it in :)
TheSeveralJourneysOfReemus@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 16:20
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The solution is, for all of you (us) who can’t find a direct source of cocoa, buying industry standard chocolate for baking and food preparations and using it. 50%, 80 an 90% cocoa bars are usually available, but they are just bars that you use as an ingredient.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 12 Mar 16:52
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Good luck finding cocoa powder or baking chocolate which is pure rather than mainly sugar.
romanticremedy@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 12 Mar 17:12
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This.
Might be a little time consuming but very rewarding. Also, they can be a easy gift to friends and families.
Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 12 Mar 17:58
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if you don’t like capitalism stop eating corpo food.
MonsterMonster@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 10:09
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I didn’t know Hershey’s used Cocoa, I thought the main ingredient was vomit.
SpikesOtherDog@ani.social
on 12 Mar 10:58
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Even if you are familiar with the process, I’ll leave this here for anyone interested in the why. Article is a bit apologetic to Hershey’s, but still seems to be good info.
Thwompthwomp@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 11:01
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I’m assuming you of course are aware, but that is a tasting note. As in hersheys will specifically call out that tasting note as intentional if you do a tasting tour. It explained why I only ever liked their special dark and hates their regular bar.
It’s a tasting note, because the original Hershey’s milk chocolate chemist accidentally spoiled the milk as part of his process.
It took a decade or two to figure out what was wrong, but by then the American public was used to vomit tasting milk chocolate.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 13:30
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Accidentally? I thought he had a large batch of spoiled milk powder and was looking for a way to use it up.
entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
on 12 Mar 14:47
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Hershey doesn’t use powdered milk. Hershey himself stubbornly insisted on the recipe using fresh milk because he had ignorantly bought up a bunch of cows before getting the recipe nailed down.
And that’s why American chocolate is bad, or so the legend goes.
Source: I’m from Pennsylvania and have taken the Hershey factory tour many times since childhood.
That may be what it is now, but the original cause was spoil d milk. Because Hershey refused to use powdered milk, he had just bought a massive dairy farm and insisted on using fresh milk.
It was very word for me. Like with most American products that were in TV series, but weren’t available in Europei was anxious to try them first time I went to the states.
Mountain dew was amazing. Taco Bell was not all I imagine it to be, but Hershey’s was just straight up disgusting.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 12:58
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It’s fine, it’s only sold in the US.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub
on 12 Mar 11:21
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“We are proud to announce our products are completely free of any natural ingredients!”
This has been that way for a while now. Reeses and Hershey’s suck. They use a PINCH of cocoa powder and their chocolate tastes and feels like wax. The peanut butter filling is basically peanut flavored sawdust. They spend crazy amounts of money reduce ingredient costs while still maintaining a somewhat edible product. They end up with “chocolate favored wax/oil and sugar”. Boycott them. You can get way better chocolate at Aldi.
PokerChips@programming.dev
on 12 Mar 15:06
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And then use scare tactics to convince everyone that we have to use their products for Halloween.
I was getting some melting wafers the other day and grabbed a bag of Ghirardelli, which has been pretty reliable in the past. I didn’t catch that they were “chocolate flavored” wafers until I was at checkout. Chocolate was the 8th ingredient.
Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 12 Mar 17:54
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dear lordt
dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 16:38
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Reeses Cups are the absolute worst candy these days. They are so terrible now, and I used to love them. The peanut filling is gross.
Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 12 Mar 17:51
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you can get better chocolate at aldi and make your own peanut butter cups at home, it’s fairly easy
edit, Ive made pot peanut butter cups before, is delightful.
low dose, but, infuse the marijuana bud with coconut oil and use the coconut oil in the chocolte when you melt it. You cant put much, but it’s fun none the less
It’s fascinating how hard some sectors are fighting to forbid replacement meats or milks to call themselves steak or milk. But those products barely resembling the original name are completely allowed to call themselves chocolate or fruit juice (based on some concentrate and some other stuff).
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 15:18
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it’s about marketing.
people don’t buy what is not familiar. so it’s very much in their interest to market these replacements as familiar products.
food is a emotional thing, it’s not logical of thoughtful. people typically only eat what they know or perceive to be good based on what others eat.
They aren’t. Next time you’re at the store, actually look at what the label says. It’ll be a big “CHOCOLATE” and then a smaller “flavored candy”.
Fruit juice from concentrate is still 100% fruit juice though. It just had the water removed and re-added.
But they do often make it “cranberry juice cocktail”, which is some part cranberry juice and mostly apple juice.
And just this week I saw orange juice that was also part pear and apple juice, but that’s probably because of citrus greening killing the orange groves.
This might be the case in the US. In the EU, chocolate is taken much more seriously. This vomit-flavored abomination called Hersheys “chocolate” is probably illegal and unfit for human consumption here.
Aware, I only buy european chocolate now. From Aldi or the local Polish grocery.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 12 Mar 19:06
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The reason Hersheys tastes like vomit actually isn’t because of the (lack of) cocoa. It’s because they use intentionally soured milk in their chocolate.
Basically, a company as large as Hershey strives for consistency instead of quality. And that means they need a consistent source of milk. The problem is obviously that milk sours fairly quickly. So rather than using inconsistent milk (which may be in various states of souring), they use butyric acid to intentionally sour the milk. And butyric acid is also found in vomit.
So when Europeans try American chocolate, they’re often disgusted by the taste. Americans have grown up expecting that tangy taste in chocolate, but Europeans haven’t. So it’s all they focus on, and it inevitably ends up with them thinking that all American chocolate just tastes like vomit.
raynethackery@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 14:56
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Perfectly describes my reaction when I first tried Hersheys “chocolade”. If people used to that already vile stuff react to a new product like that, it must be horrible.
lepinkainen@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 17:01
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EU has laws stating how much raw cocoa a product that calls itself chocolate must have.
The US, UK and EU all have government regulations about how much – or how little – cocoa an item can contain and still be considered “chocolate”, but those regulations are much stricter in Europe. In the UK, for instance, after Pladis reduced the amount of cocoa bean-derived ingredients in its McVitie’s Penguin and Club bars to below 20%, both treats were officially demoted from “chocolate” to “chocolate flavour”. In the US, the threshold is 15%, and low-cocoa items like the Unwrapped Mini Hearts can still be described as “chocolate candy”.
From the article, this is where the other answer probably got they link.
Teknikal@anarchist.nexus
on 12 Mar 17:53
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That’s how I’ve felt about soft drinks in the UK since they pulled the sugar tax, now every drink just tastes of sweeteners. I’m guessing most people can’t taste them or something but I can’t stand them.
WraithGear@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 18:41
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i mean i taste it. i started trying to give up soda in general, and the sweetened waters definitely have something about them. like the preservatives in MRE’s. it’s hard to describe the taste, and there is nothing ‘wrong’ with it, but there is also something wrong with it
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 18:49
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Yeah, I think sucralose is the only one that doesn’t taste awful to me. Like I’ve always been skeptical of the defense of aspartame because it tastes like something I shouldn’t be eating. I was looking forward to stevia back when it got popular, but it also has that taste (I’m guessing from leftover solvent, since it’s not water soluable like sugar).
There’s plenty of ways to make things taste great without relying so heavily on sweetness. I hate the western food industry’s obsession with it along with the capitalist obsession with selling as much as possible, because it’s resulted in the less sugar I’ve wanted to see instead meaning the sugar is replaced with other chemicals that taste sweet (and “chemically”).
And I doubt safety studies looked at anything beyond “does it so obviously cause issues that we’ll be sued the moment we try to sell this?”
Most sweeteners don’t bother me but stevia has a very distinct flavor that I dislike.
As for safety, aspartame is extremely well-studied and understood. It’s been used for over 50 years now. Sucralose for 30 years. We also know a lot about the dangers of high sugar intake. The no-calorie stuff is probably healthier overall in the amounts people actually consume.
Frigidlollipop@lemmy.world
on 12 Mar 19:58
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You aren’t alone. Artificial sweeteners are disgusting with a capital D.
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
on 12 Mar 18:10
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And I’m confused about how you found anything in that comment dystopian. Though I’m assuming that name I didn’t recognize is a brand name for an actual chocolate producer. Hopefully it isn’t a brand name for something similar to chocolate but not lol.
You are eating baking choco chips instead of the chocolate that is for sale and also talking about how you can’t afford the richer baking chocolate all while putting it all in a faux sounding positive light. It actualy reads much like things I read written in the dustbowl and depression.
This is not a normal state of affairs and phrasing the work a rounds like some uplifting lifehack makes it seem dystopian
Most by sheer volume because four companies make damn near every candy bar in the grocery store? Sure. Most by percent of discrete chocolatiers? Nah. There’s tons of good chocolate in the US, it’s just priced as the luxury good it should be (turns out slavery is great for keeping prices down)
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 12 Mar 19:04
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Yes, yeah, the former is what I meant there.
There indeed are tons of proper local chocaltiers in a lot of places, but sadly they do not have too much of the overall market volume.
“One German brand, the Nestlé-owned Choco Crossies, recently announced it was eliminating cocoa altogether from its new Snack Vibes line, replacing it with ChoViva, a lab-grown chocolate alternative made from fermented sunflower and grape seeds.”
How the fudge did we end up in this dystopian nightmare? ಥ_ಥ
threaded - newest
Are we finally getting some Mockolate-products?
I don’t understand how they cant see that once we leave we leave. If you bite into that and hate it its a cycle broken and we we unlikely to trust the product ever again.
Well if they all do it, who are ya gonna run to?
i will have to give it up. it will be easier if its crap anyway. Learning to pay for what you actually want vrs you think you want are two different things.
There are plenty of companies still selling actual chocolate, and since it’s chocolate and not chocolate-flavoured sweets I think it’ll just become smaller and/or more expensive. Which is fine.
The thing is, they won't ALL do it. The big names will. Real chocolate will become more of a luxury thing you have less often (which, to be fair is probably a good thing) and the established brands might survive on some blind brand loyalty, or die out.
Ozempic!
Not eating candy is always an option for adults with an ounce of self control.
I mean, you can make your own peanut butter cups…
I eat candy because it tastes good. If it all tastes like shit they why should I eat it?
Trader Joe’s has giant Belgian chocolate bars, and far far better peanut butter cups with normal PB.
It’s what happened with Bassets Winegums. Used to be my absolute favourite candy. Wife came back from the UK with a box,I opened it and the taste was… Different. Googled - turns out they changed the recipe after being purchased by some large conglomerate. I haven’t had one of their candies since 13 years ago. Fucking idiots.
That’s what happened to me and Oreo’s during the switch from soy oil to trans-fat-free oils. They were NASTY during that transition.
The New Coke fiasco begs to differ.
The cynic in me imagines that they switch away from real chocolate, everyone will hate it, they’ll release a new product line that proclaims it uses real chocolate, but charge a premium for it, and people will buy it.
Stupidity and short term money.
US chocolate…presumably Cadbury will also be affected though.
Cadbury has been garbage for years now unfortunately.
Cadbury ruined their best product, the Creme Egg, some time ago. It’s nothing like it used to be. A shame too, because they could raise the price and I still would have bought them, but as it is, I don’t remember the last time I had one.
I remember when it changed from creamy to just sugar goop that makes my teeth hurt.
My local store instead had to discount them to 25 cents each. And that’s when I started buying them up!
Have they finally admitted they made them smaller yet? They’re like half the size they used to be. Like a laughably noticable difference, but they’re still like 🤷♂️ you’re imagining things, same as always
Oh they’re definitely smaller. Smaller and taste way worse… That should improve profits! 🤦🏻♂️
And the stupid plastic casing they now use. I can feel myself microdosing plastic just thinking about it.
Club, one of my childhood favourites with the advert song of “If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club” – no longer has enough cocoa to be legally called chocolate.
Madness.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86737yg3jlo
They’ll phase anything but sugar.
Laughs in corn syrup.
Laughs in aspartame
laughs in brazillian sugar cane industry
... high fructose corn syrup has entered the chat...
There it is.
They ain’t even that cheap anymore.
I’ve had some products that use ChoViva (fake chocolate made from sunflower seeds and oats) and they were ok. On the other hand my only memory of Hershey’s chocolate is just pain, even 30 years ago (last time I was in the US). So maybe it’s not replacing cocoa as such that’s the problem.
Guys (and gals), there’s simple solution to all that: learn to bake.
We are a community of makers. We write our apps ourselves, we host our shit by ourselves, we stream our music and our movies by ourselves. So what should we do when bad corporations are taking away our snacks? Make them yourself!
Recipes are free and open. The tools are not expensive (not much RAM in the oven). There’s nothing stopping us.
So, do we need baking community?
Edit: So… !baking@lemmy.curiana.net ? It’s my self hosted server. Will that work?
Yes. Host recipes. Get productive.
I recently made brownies from scratch, and they came out so much better than the box brownies that I usually make, that my entire family noticed, and really loved them. It wasn’t that much more work than the box, you just had to measure out the flour, sugar, and cocoa, but the difference was huge. Well worth the slight extra effort.
Did you use butter and milk or oil and water in the box mix? That’s usually the only difference. The box mix is just flour, cocoa powder, salt, etc. The quality of those ingredients doesn’t vary too much.
Butter yes, milk no.
I saw an old Good Eats episode where Alton Brown put the brownies in for about 15 minutes, took them out for 10 minutes, then put them back in the oven until they were finished. He claimed that the interruption changes the chemical reaction somehow, and makes them better. I’ve tried it in the past, and they seemed to be marginally better, but it m.not sure.
I doubt that would be significant. Real butter and real milk are the biggest difference between real rich brownies and the cheap stuff.
He frequently does things that make recipes 2% better for 50% more effort. Which is appreciated, but often a little silly. Sometimes though it is well worth it.
Don’t leave us hanging. What’s the recipe?
I don’t know, I found it on the Internet, they were all more or less the same.
Baking is relatively easy, but how do you make your own chocolate? I don’t think you can properly do that at home.
It can be done, but it’s not easy.
I’ve seen recipes, which are basically just cocoa butter and cocoa powder, and they seem pretty simple, though I’ve never tried them.
Most chocolate “making” just starts with chocolate callets. Melt them, temper it, put it in moulds, and add filling. I’ve done this, and it’s not that difficult. Of course, the quality here depends on the quality of the callets, so if you start with Hershey’s (not sure if they even make callets), it’ll still taste like vomit.
You can, but you also don’t have to make it from scratch. Various forms of real, non-ultraprocessed-and-candified chocolate are guaranteed sitting lonely and forgotten in grocery store baking aisles around the world at this very moment. There’s also the option of finding a reputable local chocolatier, if you have one. I’ve never lived anywhere where there aren’t at least several local options, if not countless, but maybe I’m just lucky that way. Even if not, there’s always online ordering.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=IaCZcdWk1DU&t=1965s&pp=ygUT…
!bready@lemmy.world
Chocolate is often candymaking, not baking, though.
That’s just bread. I’m talking about cakes.
Chocolate is candy but brownie is cake :)
This has basically been my mantra for the last 5 years. “Fuck off, I’ll do it myself.”
Cooking nerd here. You can kind of make your own chocolate.
You almost certainly can’t make chocolate from scratch. You could, in theory do all the steps but even in the old days it was an industrial process and it’s nearly impossible to get the quality control tight enough at home. The fermentation, roasting, and grinding steps all have to be done under very precise conditions or you won’t get good chocolate.
You could just go really old school and use the Aztec recipes but that’s not “chocolate” as most people would know it. It’s more like a spiced tea.
Home cooks can buy chocolate (it’s worth it to splurge and get nice chocolate if you’re going through this much trouble) and mix it and shape it. You can make a wide array of flavored ganaches, coat things in chocolate, fill chocolate shells with stuff, etc.
The hardest part is tempering. Chocolate is actually a crystal. The short version is that if you don’t control that crystal formation through careful temperature and movement control, your chocolate will get weird and chalky; if you get that all right it’s smooth and snappy. There are books and videos on it but you’ll need to mess up a bunch of batches before you learn it.
<img alt="1000013898" src="https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/307dafb2-33d0-4843-8f68-51363640e2f0.webp">
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzanNNq_JZU&t=47
I read your comment in her voice
Great, that exactly the voice I wrote it in :)
The solution is, for all of you (us) who can’t find a direct source of cocoa, buying industry standard chocolate for baking and food preparations and using it. 50%, 80 an 90% cocoa bars are usually available, but they are just bars that you use as an ingredient.
Good luck finding cocoa powder or baking chocolate which is pure rather than mainly sugar.
This.
Might be a little time consuming but very rewarding. Also, they can be a easy gift to friends and families.
if you don’t like capitalism stop eating corpo food.
I didn’t know Hershey’s used Cocoa, I thought the main ingredient was vomit.
huffpost.com/…/hersheys-chocolate-tastes-like-vom…
Even if you are familiar with the process, I’ll leave this here for anyone interested in the why. Article is a bit apologetic to Hershey’s, but still seems to be good info.
I’m assuming you of course are aware, but that is a tasting note. As in hersheys will specifically call out that tasting note as intentional if you do a tasting tour. It explained why I only ever liked their special dark and hates their regular bar.
It’s a tasting note, because the original Hershey’s milk chocolate chemist accidentally spoiled the milk as part of his process.
It took a decade or two to figure out what was wrong, but by then the American public was used to vomit tasting milk chocolate.
Accidentally? I thought he had a large batch of spoiled milk powder and was looking for a way to use it up.
Hershey doesn’t use powdered milk. Hershey himself stubbornly insisted on the recipe using fresh milk because he had ignorantly bought up a bunch of cows before getting the recipe nailed down.
And that’s why American chocolate is bad, or so the legend goes.
Source: I’m from Pennsylvania and have taken the Hershey factory tour many times since childhood.
No. It’s part of their process because it makes it more shelf-stable. bbc.com/…/20231221-why-british-chocolate-tastes-t…
That may be what it is now, but the original cause was spoil d milk. Because Hershey refused to use powdered milk, he had just bought a massive dairy farm and insisted on using fresh milk.
It was very word for me. Like with most American products that were in TV series, but weren’t available in Europei was anxious to try them first time I went to the states.
Mountain dew was amazing. Taco Bell was not all I imagine it to be, but Hershey’s was just straight up disgusting.
It’s fine, it’s only sold in the US.
“We are proud to announce our products are completely free of any natural ingredients!”
It’s like a full synthetic oil change, but for your gut.
Reminds me of CHOW, the “food-free food” marketed by Famine in Good Omens.
…but no slavery
I wonder…
When you can taste the enshittification of everything.
Taste is in accordance with the color.
This has been that way for a while now. Reeses and Hershey’s suck. They use a PINCH of cocoa powder and their chocolate tastes and feels like wax. The peanut butter filling is basically peanut flavored sawdust. They spend crazy amounts of money reduce ingredient costs while still maintaining a somewhat edible product. They end up with “chocolate favored wax/oil and sugar”. Boycott them. You can get way better chocolate at Aldi.
And then use scare tactics to convince everyone that we have to use their products for Halloween.
I was getting some melting wafers the other day and grabbed a bag of Ghirardelli, which has been pretty reliable in the past. I didn’t catch that they were “chocolate flavored” wafers until I was at checkout. Chocolate was the 8th ingredient.
dear lordt
Reeses Cups are the absolute worst candy these days. They are so terrible now, and I used to love them. The peanut filling is gross.
you can get better chocolate at aldi and make your own peanut butter cups at home, it’s fairly easy
edit, Ive made pot peanut butter cups before, is delightful.
low dose, but, infuse the marijuana bud with coconut oil and use the coconut oil in the chocolte when you melt it. You cant put much, but it’s fun none the less
Hershey’s chocolate tastes like wax and vegetable oil.
It’s fascinating how hard some sectors are fighting to forbid replacement meats or milks to call themselves steak or milk. But those products barely resembling the original name are completely allowed to call themselves chocolate or fruit juice (based on some concentrate and some other stuff).
it’s about marketing.
people don’t buy what is not familiar. so it’s very much in their interest to market these replacements as familiar products.
food is a emotional thing, it’s not logical of thoughtful. people typically only eat what they know or perceive to be good based on what others eat.
They aren’t. Next time you’re at the store, actually look at what the label says. It’ll be a big “CHOCOLATE” and then a smaller “flavored candy”.
Fruit juice from concentrate is still 100% fruit juice though. It just had the water removed and re-added.
But they do often make it “cranberry juice cocktail”, which is some part cranberry juice and mostly apple juice.
And just this week I saw orange juice that was also part pear and apple juice, but that’s probably because of citrus greening killing the orange groves.
This might be the case in the US. In the EU, chocolate is taken much more seriously. This vomit-flavored abomination called Hersheys “chocolate” is probably illegal and unfit for human consumption here.
Aware, I only buy european chocolate now. From Aldi or the local Polish grocery.
The reason Hersheys tastes like vomit actually isn’t because of the (lack of) cocoa. It’s because they use intentionally soured milk in their chocolate.
Basically, a company as large as Hershey strives for consistency instead of quality. And that means they need a consistent source of milk. The problem is obviously that milk sours fairly quickly. So rather than using inconsistent milk (which may be in various states of souring), they use butyric acid to intentionally sour the milk. And butyric acid is also found in vomit.
So when Europeans try American chocolate, they’re often disgusted by the taste. Americans have grown up expecting that tangy taste in chocolate, but Europeans haven’t. So it’s all they focus on, and it inevitably ends up with them thinking that all American chocolate just tastes like vomit.
spendwithpennies.com/reeses-peanut-butter-cups-re…
Is carob more sustainable than chocolate? Does it have the same ethical problems?
If it doesn’t, it will.
I bought a caramello bar a week or two ago
Threw it away after two bites. If i wanted to chew on wax id go find those sugar water filled coke bottle shaped ones.
Why did you take a second bite?
Perfectly describes my reaction when I first tried Hersheys “chocolade”. If people used to that already vile stuff react to a new product like that, it must be horrible.
EU has laws stating how much raw cocoa a product that calls itself chocolate must have.
US has none of that
Blatantly untrue.
www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/…/section-163.130
From the article, this is where the other answer probably got they link.
That’s how I’ve felt about soft drinks in the UK since they pulled the sugar tax, now every drink just tastes of sweeteners. I’m guessing most people can’t taste them or something but I can’t stand them.
i mean i taste it. i started trying to give up soda in general, and the sweetened waters definitely have something about them. like the preservatives in MRE’s. it’s hard to describe the taste, and there is nothing ‘wrong’ with it, but there is also something wrong with it
Yeah, I think sucralose is the only one that doesn’t taste awful to me. Like I’ve always been skeptical of the defense of aspartame because it tastes like something I shouldn’t be eating. I was looking forward to stevia back when it got popular, but it also has that taste (I’m guessing from leftover solvent, since it’s not water soluable like sugar).
There’s plenty of ways to make things taste great without relying so heavily on sweetness. I hate the western food industry’s obsession with it along with the capitalist obsession with selling as much as possible, because it’s resulted in the less sugar I’ve wanted to see instead meaning the sugar is replaced with other chemicals that taste sweet (and “chemically”).
And I doubt safety studies looked at anything beyond “does it so obviously cause issues that we’ll be sued the moment we try to sell this?”
Most sweeteners don’t bother me but stevia has a very distinct flavor that I dislike.
As for safety, aspartame is extremely well-studied and understood. It’s been used for over 50 years now. Sucralose for 30 years. We also know a lot about the dangers of high sugar intake. The no-calorie stuff is probably healthier overall in the amounts people actually consume.
You aren’t alone. Artificial sweeteners are disgusting with a capital D.
Next up, saw dust in candy and chocolate!
Wood is too expensive for that.
… I just buy bags of ghiradelli dark chocolate baking chips, and eat a handful, when I feel like snacking on chocolate.
They have 72% cacao chips, but that is bit too rich for my taste and my wallet, 60% seems to hit the spot.
Much cheaper per weight than actual ghiradelli chocolate squares or whatever.
And you can just toss a few into some fresh hot coffee, stir for a minute, kablamo choco-coffee.
Anyway, yeah, most US ‘chocolate’ is disgusting.
I can’t tell if this is a moment from your real life or a bit of creative writing about a dystopian future.
And I’m confused about how you found anything in that comment dystopian. Though I’m assuming that name I didn’t recognize is a brand name for an actual chocolate producer. Hopefully it isn’t a brand name for something similar to chocolate but not lol.
You are eating baking choco chips instead of the chocolate that is for sale and also talking about how you can’t afford the richer baking chocolate all while putting it all in a faux sounding positive light. It actualy reads much like things I read written in the dustbowl and depression.
This is not a normal state of affairs and phrasing the work a rounds like some uplifting lifehack makes it seem dystopian
Most by sheer volume because four companies make damn near every candy bar in the grocery store? Sure. Most by percent of discrete chocolatiers? Nah. There’s tons of good chocolate in the US, it’s just priced as the luxury good it should be (turns out slavery is great for keeping prices down)
Yes, yeah, the former is what I meant there.
There indeed are tons of proper local chocaltiers in a lot of places, but sadly they do not have too much of the overall market volume.
“One German brand, the Nestlé-owned Choco Crossies, recently announced it was eliminating cocoa altogether from its new Snack Vibes line, replacing it with ChoViva, a lab-grown chocolate alternative made from fermented sunflower and grape seeds.”
How the fudge did we end up in this dystopian nightmare? ಥ_ಥ