Chocolate Raining from the Sky in Swiss Town

Residents of an industrial area of Olten, a town in north-western Switzerland, have been reporting chocolate powder raining from the sky for several days now.

If chocolate was ever going to fall from the sky anywhere in the world, it had to be in Switzerland. The European country is well-known for making perhaps the best chocolate in the world, so it kind of makes sense that a chocolate rain occur here. Anyway, reports of chocolate powder falling from the sky in the town of Olten started showing up online a few days ago, accompanied by photos of cars covered in the brown stuff. People could hardly believe it, but then authorities confirmed it and so did the company responsible for the bizarre phenomenon.

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Swiss Cocoa Company Creates Naturally Pink Chocolate

Ever since Nestlé introduced white chocolate, 80 years ago, chocolate has been available in only three main varieties – dark, milk and white. Well, it’s apparently time to add a fourth type to the list – Ruby pink chocolate.

Zurich-based Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest based cocoa processor, has apparently spent the last 13 years trying to produce naturally pink chocolate out of ruby cocoa beans. This cocoa variety grows in different parts of the world, including Ecuador, Brazil, and the Ivory Coast, but the Swiss company is the first to actually convert it into pink chocolate, through a sophisticated process.

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Australian Cattle Farm Claims Feeding Cows Chocolate Is the Secret to Tastier Beef

They say chocolate makes everything better, and apparently premium wagyu beef is no exception. For the past 10 years, the Mayura Station Farm in southern Australia has been feeding its full-blood wagyu cattle chocolate and other sweets mixed with their regular feed, and the results have been spectacular.

When Scott de Bruin, managing partner at Mayura Station, returned to his father’s farm in the Limestone coast of Australia, in 1998, he knew he wanted to do something special to make their beef stand out from that of other luxury cattle farms around the world. But he didn’t know exactly how he was going to do that, so he consulted a cattle nutrition specialist from Japan and spent two years experimenting with different feed before deciding on the final daily ration for his wagyu cows – a special mix of regular feed, chocolate, gummy bears, strawberries and cream flavored gummy snakes. Each cow eats up to 2 kilograms of ground and partially broken chocolate delivered by Cadbury’s every day.

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These Realistic-Looking Leather Shoes Are Actually Made of Chocolate, Cost More Than Real Shoes

Featuring perfectly replicated seams, soles and shoelaces, as well as impressively realistic finish, these life-size chocolate shoes seem made of genuine brown leather.

The “Gentleman’s Radiance” chocolate line is the creation of master chocolatier Motohiro Okai of Rihga Royal Hotel’s chocolate boutique L’éclat, in Osaka, Japan. Each leather show measures 26 centimeters (10.2 inches) in length, and is crafted exclusively from chocolate, including the insole and laces. The shoes come in three different shades of brown leather – light, dark and red-brown – and have a realistic shiny finish which Okai achieved after a painstaking process of trial and error.

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This Meat Lover’s Chocolate Is 50 Percent Beef

Red meat hardly seems like the perfect ingredient for delicious chocolate, but a New Zealand-based food scientist is willing to bet that his high-protein, 50% beef chocolate recipe is going to be a hit.

Mustafa Farouk, Senior Food Technologist at Ag Research has partnered with Auckland boutique chocolate maker Devonport Chocolates to bring meat chocolate to the masses. The quirky idea of combining the two very different ingredients came to Dr. Farouk one day, while looking at ways of adding value to beef and pondering ways the staple food might be consumed in the future. Mixing beef and chocolate seemed like the perfect way for people to get proteins and other nutrients in meat, because chocolate is such a popular dessert.

So Farouk took a very lean cut from the hind quarter of a Waikato-raised bovine, turned into what he calls “chocolate butter”, which I assume is a sort of fine paste, and handed it over to Devonport Chocolates to use in their confectionery. The resulting combination reportedly has a consistency similar to a Turkish delight, and while the food scientist admits you can tell that it’s not regular chocolate, the taste of meat is almost impossible to pick up. In an interview with the New Zealand Herald, Farouk described the taste of beef chocolate as “wonderful”, adding that although people are initially put off by the unique dessert when they here it is 50% beef, once they bite into it and taste the rich chocolate flavor, most agree that it is excellent.

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Controversial Chocolate Snorting Device Gives You a Legal High

You’re probably not a true chocolate addict unless you’ve actually snorted the stuff. If you didn’t know that was even possible, well it is, thanks to Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone. He’s created something called a chocolate shooter – a device that launches small lumps of cocoa powder directly into the nostrils.

While the health effects of inhaling chocolate are pretty much unknown, Persoone’s device is gaining popularity quite rapidly. He first created the snorter for a Rolling Stones party in 2007, inspired by a device that his grandfather used to inhale tobacco snuff. It consists of a tiny catapult with two small, spring-loaded spoons that fling cocoa powder into the nostrils.

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World’s Most Expensive Chocolate Costs a Whopping $260 per 42-Gram Bar

If you’re looking for the finest dark chocolate money can buy, you might want to try , a delicate, handmade chocolate, made from the finest cacao beans Ecuador has to offer. At a hefty $260 per 1.5 ounce-bar, it is the most expensive chocolate in the world.

According to the makers of To’ak, 95 percent of the world’s chocolate is made from mass-produced beans, whereas they use rare cacao seeds harvested from the coast of Ecuador. These seeds are fermented and converted into liquid chocolate, which is then hand-moulded into bars. Each bar contains 81 percent cacao, and requires 36 different steps to create. Finally, a single, hand-selected, hand-measured, shelled cacao bean is placed in the center. The bean, measuring between 7 and 8 mm, has to fit perfectly.

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World’s First “Beauty Chocolate” Keeps Your Skin Looking Young

Developed by a Cambridge University affiliated laboratory, Esthechoc is being touted as the world’s first ‘beauty chocolate’. It’s a dark chocolate with 70 percent cocoa containing high levels of two powerful anti-oxidants which help reverse the skin’s natural ageing process.

A 7.5g piece of Esthechoc has as many cocoa flavanols as a 100g piece of regular chocolate, and the same amount of astaxanthin as 300g of wild salmon. These substances are believed to help improve blood circulation and increase blood supply to the skin, making it look healthier and younger. Cambridge-based bio-medical company Lycotec tested the chocolate on volunteers aged between 50 and 60, and recorded visible benefits in just three weeks.

“After 3-4 weeks of daily intake by 50-60 year old volunteers, the Beauty Chocolate was able to not only suppress markers of sub-clinical inflammatory damage in their blood, but also reverse their age-related depression of microcirculation and blood supply to such peripheral tissues as subcutaneous fat and skin,” Lycotec claims in a post on its website. “This consequently resulted in a significant boost of oxygen delivery to these tissues and restoration of their respiration – the essential physiological need in controlling and supporting skin health.”

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Teapot Made Entirely from Chocolate Can Hold Boiled Water without Melting

You’d expect a chocolate teapot to be completely useless (except for devouring), but believe it or not, this one actually works. Engineered by Nestlé Master Chocolatier John Costello, this fully functional chocolate teapot is meant for brewing tea. It works exactly like a regular teapot – it won’t melt and the tea comes out tasting a bit like chocolate.

Costello and his colleagues decided to make the pot after they were challenged by a BBC TV series called The One Show. They had to prove that the statement ‘there’s nothing more useless than a chocolate teapot’ was false. And they managed to do just that.

So how exactly do you go about making a heat-resistant chocolate teapot? Well, it all depends on the type of chocolate you choose. Costello and his team opted for dark chocolate with 65 percent cocoa solids, because its low fat content would make it more resistant to heat.

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Anus-Shaped Chocolates – The World’s Most Outrageous Treats

From cooked insects to fermented bird meat, humans have been eating all kinds of outrageous foods for hundreds of years, but there are some things that I just wouldn’t dream of putting in my mouth. One of them is the anus-shaped Belgian chocolates sold by a cheeky British chocolaterie.

If you think the chocolate “Edible Anus” looks remarkably like the real thing, that’s because it’s made using a mold “crafted from the posterior” of the company’s “stunning butt model.” Feel like throwing up yet? There’s really no proof of that on their official website, so you’ll just have to take their word for it. The allegedly delicious treats are hand-crafted in the UK, and contain no artificial preservatives, if it’s any consolation. According to the geniuses behind this novelty desert, the Edible Anus is “the perfect gift for the whole family” and will “light up” Grandma’s face, as she “unwraps a homely selection of chocolate cracks”. I’m pretty sure my family would disown me if I sent them a box of these unique treats, but they’re actually a great gift idea for your proctologist. Read More »

Eat My Face – 3D Printed Face in Chocolate for Valentine’s Day

Nothing says “I love you” like your detailed mug rendered in delicious chocolate. At least that’s what the Japanese at 3D-printing firm KS Design Lab and FabCafe, in Tokyo, are hoping you’ll think, as they offer patrons the chance to “chocolatize” their faces as gifts for Valentine’s Day.

Valenntine’s is big business in Japan. As we previously reported, a lot of Japanese chocolate companies record half their annual sales in the days before the romantic holiday. In the Land of the Rising Sun, only women offer gifts to men, usually in the form of chocolate sweets. Trying to stand out from the competition, 3D-printing firm KS Design Lab and Tokyo’s FabCafe, in the Shibuya district, have teamed up to offer a very original service to a group of women attending their workshop – 3D printed models of their faces in chocolate, to be given as presents on Valentine’s Day. Some of you may find them oishii (delicious), but I think they qualify more as kimoi (creepy). “We were brainstorming together about how the 3D-printing technology could appeal to consumers, when we hit on the idea of Valentine’s Day chocolates,” PR rep. Kazue Nakata explained.

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Chocolate High-Heels – Probably the Best Valentine’s Day Gift for Women

Combining two of women’s favorite things in the world, chocolate and shoes, Texas chocolatier Andrea Pedrazza creates what can only be considered the perfect Valentine’s Day gift for the ladies – chocolate high-heels.

The two weeks before Valentine’s Day is the busiest time of the year for Dallas-based chocolate shop CocoAndre. I’m sure there are other great places to buy tasty chocolate in D-Town, but only here can men find the most delicious designer shoes at a fraction of the price. Master chocolatier Andrea Pedrazza pours the brown goodness into plastic high-heel molds and decorates them with gourmet ingredients to make them look as realistic as possible. Unsurprisingly, her most popular creations are chocolate Christian Louboutin shoes which sell for $35. To recreate the designer’s signature red soles, the food artist uses red ganache. Available styles include simple colors, zebra or cheetah print and polka dots, so men wanting to gift their wives with their favorite shoes for cheap are bound to find something they like.

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Incredibly Detailed 34-Meter-Long Train Model Is Made Entirely from Chocolate

Created by master chocolatier Andrew Farrugia, from Malta, this edible train model has set a new Guinness World Record the longest chocolate structure in the world. It measures a whopping 34 meters in length and features every detail of a classic steam-powered choo-choo.

Unveiled at the “Brussels Chocolate Week”, in Belgium’s capital city, this tasty masterpiece had everyone drooling. Made of 2,755 pounds (1250 kilos) of the finest Belgian chocolate, donated by chocolate brand Belcolade, this 34-meter-long steam train replica took Maltese chocolate artist Andrew Farrugia a painstaking 784 hours to complete. If you’re wondering about calorie volume, this delicious masterpiece packs a massive 6.5 million calories. Farrugia got the idea for the train last year, when visiting Belgian Chocolate Festival in Bruge. “I had this idea for a while, and I said what do you think if we do this realization of a long chocolate train, you know, because a train you can make it as long as you like,” he told the press.

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World’s Largest Chocolate Sculpture Is a Tribute to the Mayan Civilization

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Qzina Specialty Foods has set a new Guinness Record for the World’s Largest Chocolate Sculpture, by creating a sweet replica of a Mayan temple weighing 18,239 pounds.

Qzina chose a Mayan theme for their impressive project, because the ancient civilization played a crucial role in the discovery of chocolate. They were among the first to cultivate Cacao trees and acknowledge the true potential of the cocoa bean. They practically worshiped cocoa and praised it as the food of the Gods. So, as a tribute to Mayan contribution in the evolution of chocolate, Qzina’s corporate pastry chef, Francois Mellet and pastry artist Stephane Treand decided to create a scale model of the Temple of Kukulkan, at Chichen Itza.

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At The Generous Store Chocolates Cost Good Deeds Instead of Money

If Charlie Bucket could win Willy Wonka’s entire chocolate factory for a good deed, why can’t we be awarded with at least a box of chocolates, right? Turns out we can! At The Anthon Berg Generous Store money is of no use, because all it takes to get some delicious chocolate is the promise of a good deed.

The pop-up chocolate store, located in the center of Copenhagen, opened its doors to the public last month. Inside, the boxes of candy are marked with unique price tags: ‘Don’t comment on your girlfriend’s driving for a week’, ‘Serve breakfast in bed to your loved one’ and ‘No talking behind your girlfriend’s back for a month’. The most popular of them all is ‘Help clean a friend’s house’. Hardly anyone touches the box that says ‘A week where you don’t lie to your father’.

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