o you think you like chocolate.
But how much do you really know about this food you claim to love? True chocolate devotion goes beyond throwing around names like Lindt and Hershey’s. Can you name the first chocolate bar? Can you explain what makes Divine chocolate bars special? Do you know which chocolate bar is objectively best?
I didn’t think so. Read on…
1. Fry Chocolate Cream.
The first bar of chocolate ever! Joseph Fry and Sons were the smart (chocolate) cookies who mixed chocolate powder into a cream and then poured it into a mold. Before this, chocolate was only enjoyed in beverage form.
2. Thorton’s 6-Ton Chocolate Bar.
The largest chocolate bar in the world, according to Guinness World Records. Four meters by four meters and weighing almost six tons. That’s a lot of chocolate. This bar was created in Derbyshire, England, with molds that took over ten hours to fill. Eventually, the chocolate bar was broken up and pieces were sold for charity.
3. Japanese KitKats.
The weirdest chocolate bars. That’s plural because I couldn’t pick which was weirdest. The Japanese KitKat is an umbrella term for over 300 of the strangest gourmet flavors you can combine with chocolate: jasmine tea, soybean, sushi, grilled potato, soybean, mango… the list goes on. It gets crazier in the Kitkats that leave out the chocolate… but we’re talking about chocolate bars here.
4. Ration D.
The first chocolate bar designed to taste awful. During WWII, a Colonel Logan asked the Hershey Corporation to make a chocolate bar for troops to eat in emergencies. It needed to have 600 calories, withstand temperatures of 120, and taste unappetizing so as not to tempt soldiers in non-emergency situations. Hershey obligingly made the bar so disgusting it earned the nickname “Hitler’s Secret Weapon.”
5. Green & Black Maya Gold.
The first Fairtrade chocolate bar! Created in 1994, this bar allowed consumers to enjoy chocolate without supporting an industry that used child labor and human trafficking in cocoa farms. The spicy flavor of this chocolate bar was modeled after recipes for the original Mayan chocolate beverage.
6. Divine Fairtrade Milk Chocolate.
The first chocolate bar from a company owned by cocoa farmers! The Day Chocolate Company, now Divine Chocolate Inc, was co-founded in 1998 by Twin Trading and the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative of over 85,000 Ghanaian farmers.
7. Cailler 64% Dark Chocolate.
The best chocolate bar. Because I said so. And my roommate agrees. So there.
