If you are not familiar with s’mores, it is like a marshmallow and chocolate sandwich with the bread replaced with graham crackers.  First roast a marshmallow skewered on the end of a long stick or fork over the coals of a camp fire or grill. 

Meanwhile put a piece of chocolate on a graham cracker.  After the marshmallow turns a golden brown, you pull it off the stick, place it on top of the chocolate, and top with another graham cracker.  The warm marshmallow melts the chocolate and voilà! a s’more is born.

No one is certain when or who invented the s’more.  The accepted idea is that the Girl Scouts made “Some Mores” at Girl Scout Camp back in the 1920’s.

Here’s my theory:  someone forgot it was a bad idea taking candy bars camping during the summer heat and the whole lot melted before dessert time.  Because the dim-witted person was also frugal, there was a strong need not to waste the chocolate.

This is how chocolate and I get along in the heat…  If I purchase a gift of chocolate from my favorite chocolate shop during summer, I go into game show contestant mode.  The game is called “Get Home Before It Melts.”

If I succeed, I declare myself the winner and treat myself to some chocolate (go figure! ).   There is strategy involved.  I have to pick the most efficient route home, and I must place the chocolate directly under the AC vent on the floor of my car with it blowing full blast.  I yell at all the drivers to get out of my way as I precariously drive the line between speeding and simply going slightly over the limit.

Back to s’mores.  The real reason I bring this up today is because of an article I read from Global Exchange.  They remind us to use fair trade chocolate when making our s’mores this summer.  No, sad to say, Hershey is not fair trade, so what this really means is that you might have to step out of your flavor comfort zone and explore a new taste while supporting the fair trade initiative.

To learn more about their project, visit this website: www.globalexchange.org/smoresaction.

The staff here at Chocolate University Online have created a special 100th anniversary edition of this book and released it in a PDF download format.

In addition to the original text and 138 recipes, the book contains an all new introduction by CUO staff.  We also took each of the pictures and moved them to the same page as their corresponding recipes.  It’s much more convenient to see the picture right there rather than looking at various photo pages to get an idea of the finished product.

Furthermore, we added a great new alphabetical index.  Now if you know the name of the recipe you’ll be able to find it quickly.  That makes the book much friendlier than the original which, quite uselessly, listed all recipes in page number order.

The new version is for sale and immediate download at our Chocolate Store page.  Enjoy!

She said I did a great job pointing out the reasons to fall in love with gourmet chocolate, but that sometimes she just wants a big handful of M&Ms.  She wondered if something was wrong with her.

Perhaps there are many things wrong with her, but I don’t think craving M&M’s is one of them!    A large part of enjoying chocolate involves memories of our early chocolate experiences.  Children as young as age 9-11 start to prefer chocolate over other candy.

(Some of my early chocolate memories don’t involve Hershey bars or M&M’s so maybe that is why I don’t reach for them when I have a chocolate craving.  My Dad introduced me to Marshall Field’s Frango™ Mints and Dark Chocolate Covered Orange Peel at an early age.  Thank you, Dad!)

If you crave mass-produced candy bars you are not alone.  The top ten most popular chocolate bars in the U.S. (based on sales in US Dollars) are:

1. Snickers
2. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup
3. Kit Kat
4. Butterfinger
5. Milky Way
6. 3 Musketeers
7. Baby Ruth
8. M&Ms Plain Chocolate Candies
9. Oh Henry
10. Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar

Snickers tops the list with over 2 BILLION dollars in global annual sales!

Sometimes our past favorites are not made anymore.  Do you remember any of these candy bars?

1. Bar None
2. Caravelle Bar
3. Chocolate Babies
4. Chocolate Cow
5. Chocolite
6. Forever Yours
7. Rally Bar
8. Marathon
9. Mars Bar
10. Milkshake Candy Bar
11. Nestle Alpine White Bar
12. PBMax Candy Bar
13. Peanut Butter No Jelly Bar
14. Seven-Up Bar
15. Willie Wonka Oompas

I will always recommend you choose fine premium chocolate over the vending machine candy bar.  But, if you need a trip down memory lane, I say go for it.  And after you have satisfied that urge, promise me you’ll take a moment and enjoy a fresh chocolate truffle or a rich butter cream.

Well, that excuse isn’t very good at Chocolate University Online.  Since your homework is chocolate, you’d better hope your dog doesn’t eat it!  We’d hate for you to get behind on your homework tending to a sick dog.

But now, as kids are heading back to school, perhaps there is a new excuse to consider, “My Husband Ate My Homework!“  You bet, when chocolate is around, someone is going to eat it.  And, as a student at CUO you’ll have chocolate lying around. 

To commemorate this grand excuse we’ve introduced the “My Husband Ate My Homework!” t-shirt.  You can find this in our chocolate store.  Look closely and you’ll also see you can get a “My Wife Ate My Homework!” t-shirt as well.  Maybe this t-shirt is even more accurate as the wife is actively prowling for chocolate.

Finally, though not so much an excuse, but a declaration, we have another t-shirt of similar style available.  It tells anyone coming near to, “Eat Your Own Homework!“  Leave your hands off mine.  Or maybe the same phrase expresses your excitement that you get to “Eat Your Own Homework!”  Whatever it means to you, share it with a fun t-shirt from Chocolate University Online.

Get any of these funs shirts for yourself or as gifts for any chocolate lovers.  You’ll find these shirts in our chocolate store.

Apparently the astronauts need their chocolate fix too. Or, at least, the marketing department is quite active in its desire to have us think so.

First of all, our kids had to get some freeze-dried ice cream. You know that’s official “space food,” originally developed for early Apollo missions.

Apparently the ice cream is real, but it is frozen and then vacuum dried. We tried two different flavors; cookies & cream and chocolate / vanilla / strawberry. Both of these have chocolate in common.

The cookies & cream version was like an ice cream sandwich having two chocolate cookies with the ice cream between.

It’s actually amazing how good these products taste. I guess that anything with enough sugar is bound to taste good!

We tried another product too, “Space Food Sticks.”. The best way to describe this is like a fluffier version of a large Tootsie Roll. It was apparently “developed for the U.S. space program.”

Bryn seems to remember eating these as a child. I don’t remember these sticks at all.

All of these products contain cocoa. The sticks also contain cocoa butter and chocolate flavor.

Websites for these sites are www.luvyduvy.com and www.spacefoodsticks.com.