What you say about us...
Good luck & just keep doing all the fine, innovative desserts you're famous for!! -B&K
Heaven Sent Desserts
Heavenly Delicious!
Plan your special celebrations at Heaven Sent Desserts. We
help celebrate your wedding, anniversary,
birthdays,
graduations, promotions, or just because it is Tuesday (or
because you just feel like it!)
History of Chocolate
The Aztecs and Mayas believed that the cocoa tree was given to human beings by the feathered snake god Quetzalcoatl, and that cocoa beans had magical powers. This divine origin is reflected in the modern scientific name for the cocoa bean - Theobroma Cacao - since 'Theobroma' means 'food of the gods'.
Cocoa beans were used as money in parts of South America, and the Aztec emperor Montezuma was well known for his habit of drinking a brew made from the beans, called 'xocolatl'. When the Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortéz arrived in Mexico in 1519, the Aztecs at first mistook him for Quetzalcoatl himself, and treated him as an honoured guest. Montezuma offered Cortéz a drink of xcolatl, which he did not like - an early clue to the fact that he was not Quetzalcoatl. Montezuma eventually expelled Cortéz from his city, but was powerless to defeat the Spanish troops, who brutally conquered the Aztec empire.
Cortéz sent cocoa beans and the recipe for xcolatl back to Spain. The Spaniards sweetened the drink by adding sugar, and tried to retain a monopoly on cocoa a for commercial reasons. But the Italians, French, Dutch and English gradually acquired their own sources of cocoa, and it became a prized commodity in Europe - a luxury drink, only available to the wealthy and noble. The first 'cocoa house' opened in London in 1657, and set a trend for fashionable meeting places where hot cocoa was drunk.
Cocoa is the dried and partially fermented fatty seed of the cacao tree from which chocolate is made. In the United States, 'cocoa' often refers to cocoa powder, the dry powder made by grinding cocoa seeds and removing the cocoa butter from the dark, bitter cocoa solids. By itself it has an extremely bitter flavor.
A pod has a rough leathery rind about 3 cm thick (this varies with the origin of pod). It is filled with sweet, slimy pulp called 'bava de cacao' in South America, enclosing 30 to 50 large almond-like seeds (beans) that are fairly soft and pinkish or purplish in color. Hot cocoa is often confused with hot chocolate, but hot cocoa is made from the cocoa solids, while true hot chocolate is made from whole chocolate.
1500 BC-400 BC - The Olmec Indians are believed to be the first to grow cocoa beans as a domestic crop.
250 to 900 CE - The consumption of cocoa beans was restricted to the Mayan society's elite, in the form of an unsweetened cocoa drink made from the ground beans.
AD 600 - Mayans migrate into northern regions of South America establishing earliest known cocoa plantations in the Yucatan.
14th Century - The drink became popular among the Aztec upper classes who upsurped the cocoa beverage from the Mayans and were the first to tax the beans. The Aztecs called it "xocalatl" meaning warm or bitter liquid.
1502 - Columbus encountered a great Mayan trading canoe in Guanaja carrying cocoa beans as cargo.
1519 - Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez recorded the cocoa usage in the court of Emperor Montezuma.
1544 - Dominican friars took a delegation of Kekchi Mayan nobels to visit Prince Philip of Spain. The Mayans brought gift jars of beaten cocoa , mixed and ready to drink. Spain and Portugal did not export the beloved drink to the rest of Eurpoe for nearly a century.
16th Century Europe - The Spanish began to add cane sugar and flavorings such as vanilla to their sweet cocoa beverages.
1570 - Cocoa gained popularity as a medicine and aphrodisiac.
1585 - First official shipments of cocoa beans began arriving in Seville from Vera Cruz, Mexico.
1657 - The first chocolate house was opened in London by a Frenchman. The shop was called the The Coffee Mill and Tobacco Roll. Costing 10 to 15 shillings per pound, chocolate was considered a beverage for the elite class.
1674 - Eating solid chocolate was introduced in the form of chocolate rolls and cakes, served in chocolate emporiums.
1730 - Cocoa beans had dropped in price from $3 per lb. to being within the financial reach of those other than the very wealthy.
1732 - French inventor, Monsieur Dubuisson invented a table mill for grinding chocolate.
1753 - Swedish naturalist, Carolus Linnaeus was dissatisfied with the word "cocoa," so renamed it "theobroma," Greek for "food of the gods."
1765 - Chocolate was introduced to the United States when Irish chocolate-maker John Hanan imported cocoa beans from the West Indies into Dorchester, Massachusetts, to refine them with the help of American Dr. James Baker. The pair soon after built America's first chocolate mill and by 1780, the mill was making the famous BAKER'S ® chocolate.
1795 - Dr. Joseph Fry of Bristol, England, employed a steam engine for grinding cocoa beans, an invention that led to the manufacture of chocolate on a large factory scale.