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I’ve long fought the battle in defense of milk chocolate. My colleague Yasmin Tayag understands this position—her favorite chocolate treat is the Cadbury Creme Egg—but in a recent article, she acknowledges that genuinely “good chocolate …. should taste richly of cocoa.”
Many of the milky, sugary versions of chocolate are light on actual cocoa, she explains: “M&M’s, Snickers bars, and Hershey’s Kisses aren’t staples of American diets because they are the best—rather, they satisfy our desire for chocolate while costing a fraction of a jet-black bar made from single-origin cocoa.”
Now the ongoing cocoa shortage is driving prices way up, in ways that will affect even low-in-cocoa chocolate varieties. Commercial chocolate makers may start to tweak their recipes to use less cocoa; as Yasmin puts it, “Chocolate as we know it may never be the same.” I don’t tell you this to ruin your weekend. Instead, let the news encourage you to savor your favorites while you can (for me, it’s those extra-milky Dove milk-chocolate pieces).
On Chocolate
Chocolate Might Never Be the Same
By Yasmin Tayag
The cocoa shortage is making chocolate more expensive—maybe forever.
Silicon Valley Is Coming for Your Chocolate
By Larissa Zimberoff
One day, cocoa might come from a petri dish.
Milk Chocolate Is Better Than Dark, the End
By Megan Garber
Do you enjoy being reminded that the treat (“treat”) you are eating has been extruded from a crushed-up plant?
Still Curious?
- How to make hot chocolate: In March 1994, Corby Kummer explained how to make hot chocolate an opulent, adult drink.
- Americans don’t really like to chew: For texturally exciting gummies, you have to look outside the United States, Sarah Zhang wrote last year.
Other Diversions
P.S.
In 1943, the self-proclaimed chocolate addict WIlliam Henry Chamberlin came up with an ill-advised plan for handling the chocolate shortage of the time. “Life without sun or air might be made endurable by some miracle of science,” he wrote. “But not life without chocolate. Should this be denied, I cherish wild dreams of emigrating to Ecuador or Guatemala. There (although I have never raised anything more productive than ideas) I would layout, a personal Victory Garden in which the sole crop would be cocoa beans, which I would chew raw if necessary.”
— Isabel