Wacky World of Choc Wednesdays: Harry Potter’s chocolate habit
“Chocolate. Eat. It’ll help.”
~Remus Lupin to Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The interwebs are all abuzz for Harry Potter, and rightly so, in celebration of the release of the last film installment. For lovers of the books and films alike, this is a very exciting, although bittersweet time.
All the more appropriate, then, to consider the importance of chocolate in the wizarding world. Its comforting properties for emotional fans are most welcome now.
Not long ago, a delightful friend visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a new theme park at Universal Orlando. When I saw her soon after, she generously presented me with this special token – the Honeydukes Dark Chocolate bar.
Of course I can’t eat it yet. It’s too special. I need to stare at it and desire it for a long time first. Or save it for use in the event of a Dementor attack.
The gift of this bar and my friend’s contagious enthusiasm for Harry Potter rekindled my curiosity and got me sniffing around for chocolate’s place in the Harry Potter stories. As it turns out, those wonderful wizards just might be a bunch of chocoholics like us Muggles (or Muggle-born, as the case might be).
According to the Harry Potter Wiki:
Chocolate has special properties in the wizarding world.
Not only does it make a wonderful treat for the consumer, but it serves as a powerful and excellent antidote for the chilling, cold effect produced by contact with Dementors, and other particularly nasty forms of dark magic. Remus Lupin carried chocolate with him on the Hogwarts Express and gave Harry Potter some after the latter was attacked by a Dementor. When Madam Pomfrey heard that Remus Lupin had given Harry chocolate after his encounter with the Dementor, she nodded approvingly and stated that “at last, we have a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher who knows his remedies.” She herself used a large chunk of Honeydukes chocolate in the hospital wing to treat Harry Potter and Hermione Granger after they and Sirius Black were attacked by several Dementors in 1994.
Throughout the books, Harry and his fellow wizards stock up on treats at the beloved Honeydukes, a sweet shop in picturesque, magical Hogsmeade Village. (Like all excellent candy shops, its basement hides a secrete passageway to Hogwarts.) References to all manner of candy, much of it chocolatey, abound. There’s Charm Choc, Chocoballs, Chocolate Cauldrons, Chocolate Frogs, Chocolate Skeletons, Chocolate Wands, Choco-Loco, exploding bonbons (which contain pure cocoa and coconut dynamite!), Fudge Flies, Shock-o-Choc, and Wizochoc, just to name a few. The Harry Potter Wiki provides a comprehensive list.
But where do we, the humble, hungry fans, find chocolate suitable for a wizard’s cravings and/or antidotal needs?
We’re in luck, thanks to the Wizarding World’s Honeydukes Homemade Sweets shop, which now has a US location and countrywide distribution of a line of Harry Potter tie-in candies that are actually available in real life.
Universal describes Honeydukes as:
A must-stop for visitors to Hogsmeade, at Honeydukes the shelves are lined with all manner of colorful sweets, including Acid Pops, exploding bonbons, Cauldron Cakes, treacle fudge, Fizzing Whizzbees, and Chocolate Frogs, which contain a wizard training card in each box. Inside the shop you can fill up a bag of Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavour Beans… who knows what tasty (or not so tasty) flavors you’ll discover! The shop also offers other classic favorites such as chocolates and fudge.
Here’s a video showing the theme park location of the sweets shop:
I find myself happily caught up in the Harry Potter frenzy. I even watched the sappy J.K. Rowling docudrama (Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story, starring Poppy Montgomery) on Lifetime — it was cloyingly adorable. In doing this research on chocolate, I’ve decided that there are several wizard candies that I’d like to try. They are: the Honeydukes milk chocolate bar, Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Bott’s Jelly Beans (so eww but so cool!), Fudge Flies, Droobles Best Blowing Gum, Jelly Slugs, Acid Pops, and Fizzing Whizbees.
Oh, who am I kidding, I’d like to try them all. And I plan to.
“After all, it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.” (wisdom from Albus Dumbledore, quoted in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)
A note on the ethics behind this line of candy: The company that produces Harry Potter chocolate received a failing grade from the International Labor Rights Forum. Members of The Harry Potter Alliance, a non-profit organization devoted to civic engagement using parallels from the Harry Potter books, have recently made great strides in asking Warner Bros. to choose fair trade chocolate for its candy products. Actors from the film series have also joined in this active campaign. See this Child Slavery Horcrux Update for more information. I plan to get involved immediately and I am hopeful that this continued advocacy and intervention will make a difference.
Wacky World of Choc Wednesdays: Chocolate Stop Motion Videos
This week’s focus is on chocolate, artistry, and technology once again, this time in the form of videos that apply stop motion animation techniques to chocolate. Chocolate lends itself well to stop motion and recent use of the technique ranges from slick pro jobs with fancy props, lighting, and the use of sophisticated software to DIY digital camera+candy+home computer work done on the cheap.
A friend of a friend passed on this whimsical video for Jesse & Joy’s “Chocolate,” directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada:
The stop motion video uses dozens of different foods, chocolate and cookies principal among them, and was put together by an incredibly artistic (and organized!) crew. It’s result is a gorgeous mix of organic materials and technological possibility. I especially love the elephant drummer and the cheery singing dairy cows. Watch the behind the scenes video for a look at how they used a torch to melt chocolate through a metal table. Don’t try this at home, kids.
The chorus of the song, first in the original Spanish, then roughly translated into English:
Nuestro amor sabe a chocolate
Un corazón de bombón que late
Nuestro amor sabe a chocolate
Oh oh oh oh ohOur love knows chocolate
A chocolate heart that beats
Our love knows chocolate
Oh oh oh oh oh
Cadbury Creme Egg launched an ad campaign in 2008 with the absurd slogan “Release the Goo.” The campaign has a website linking to games, apps, and consumer generated content, all centered around dares. It also includes a number of short stop motion videos ending with dramatic explosions of Cadbury Creme Egg gooeyness. A particularly heartwrenching example, Mousetrap:
A YouTube search reveals a host of DIY stop motion videos that involve chocolate. While these videos are not as elaborate as those of Jesse & Joy or Cadbury Creme Eggs, they are nevertheless entertaining examples of chocolate stop motion fun.
For example, there is the touching Milk Chocolate: A Love Story starring interracial chocolate bunnies:
And the riveting Chocolate Tetris played with Ritter Sport squares:
Finally, the team behind the new Sagres Preta Chocolate Beer from Portugal adapted the stop motion technique to create “the world’s first website entirely made of chocolate”, an interactive site that’s worth a look to admire its artistry. The launch of the beer in conjunction with the site has generated viral publicity on the web; blogs and feeds have discussed the site extensively over the past two months (e.g. posts from Foodista, Oddity Central, and so good magazine. Here’s a behind the scenes look at the making of the site:
So cool.
Links: Recent News in Chocolate, Culture, and the Politics of Food
Chocolate news
America’s Favorite Chocolate Candy Bars Are Soon to Become Another Genetically Modified Food. This is very disturbing news for the chocolate world. GM crops present an enormous danger to biological diversity, and thus to the future diversity of available cacao.
Hungary proposes a ‘chocolate tax’
“The Hungarian government has proposed the introduction of a special tax on food products and drinks which contain salt or sugar in excessive quantities, Reuters reports.” This is one approach toward legislative intervention in the global obesity crisis.
Good news for researchers: Nestlé opens archives facility in York
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) plans to regulate some health claims made about chocolate by food companies. For now, they state that: “Theobromine in cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) does not enhance mood.”
Cargill has designated three employees to work exclusively on sustainability projects: Cargill sets up dedicated team to accelerate sustainable cocoa agenda
A new chocolate bar that I’m adding to the “must try” list:
Chuao Chocolatier Proves Opposites Attract with “Potato Chips in Chocolate” Bar. This bar brings together milk chocolate and potato chips. Hallelujah, hallelujah! Childhood junk food dreams come true!
You can even watch a delicious video of the bar being made:
Droolworthy chocolate recipes from the blogging world, all look great for summer:
Bitter Chocolate and Buttermilk Ice Cream, from Leite’s Culinaria
(Note: see David Lebovitz’s How To Make Ice Cream Without a Machine for a simple DIY method.)
Bread with Chocolate and Olive Oil, from Mark Bittman
Dark Chocolate Mocha Fudge Pops, from Always Order Dessert
Frozen Chocolate Peanut Dacquoise, from Alice Q. Foodie
No Bake Chocolate Cake Recipe, from 101 Cookbooks
Food politics news:
I’ll be attending this food politics webinar next Thursday, July 14th, from 5-7pm: Law as a Social Determinant: Black Health, Food Insecurity, and the Law. I once worked with a wonderful undergraduate student who introduced me to the problem of food deserts, and I’ve been trying to learn more about them (well, really about how to get rid of them), especially in the context of race and class in the US, ever since.
Infographic: USDA’s latest data on adoption GM crops: 65%-94% of corn, soy, and cotton. (via @marionnestle)
Must read article: Big Ag’s Latest Attempt to Chill Free Speech, from Michele Simon
During the week, I tweet many of these articles via my twitter feed.
Wacky World of Choc Wednesdays: Chocolate Printing
One of the news stories making its way through both the geek and chocolate worlds this week has to do with a 3D printer that prints with chocolate.
From the press release, entitled “The future of gift shopping – design and print your own 3D chocolate objects”:
Using new digital technology the printer allows you to create your own designs on a computer and reproduce them physically in three dimensional form in chocolate.
The project is funded as part of the Research Council UK Cross-Research Council Programme – Digital Economy and is managed by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) on behalf of ESRC, AHRC and MRC. It is being led by the University of Exeter in collaboration with the University of Brunel and software developer Delcam.
3D printing is a technology where a three dimensional object is created by building up successive layers of material. The technology is already used in industry to produce plastic and metal products but this is the first time the principles have been applied to chocolate.
The research has presented many challenges. Chocolate is not an easy material to work with because it requires accurate heating and cooling cycles. These variables then have to be integrated with the correct flow rates for the 3D printing process. Researchers overcame these difficulties with the development of new temperature and heating control systems.
There are a number of enthusiastic posts from the geek/tech world that explain the implications of a product like this, e.g.:
Chocolate Printer Is Here; Foodies of the World Celebrate, from PC World
UK researchers developing 3D printer that crafts with chocolate, from Digital Trends
Chocolate 3-D Printer Arrives At Last, from Wired
The printer sounds like a neat way to be creative with chocolate, though I expect that fine chocolate connoisseurs are with me in wondering how much the chocolate quality will be compromised. It’s also not yet widely available for use, so those of us eager to see it in action will just have to wait. The good news is, if you’re a handy geek and would like to make a 3D chocolate printer at home, say, with LEGOs, there’s an Instructable for that!
For a number of years, of course, there has been a robust business around printing on chocolate. Consumers can do things like personalize their M&Ms and put their faces on lollipops with relative ease. There is even a food printer that can print white ink on thin sheets of dark chocolate [video].
Sweden-based MasterPiece Systems and US-based Chocolography are just two of the companies offering sophisticated equipment that can print on chocolate.
Check out this sultry video for a demo of the MX-315 from MasterPiece Systems:
And here’s an interview with Mark Weiss of Chocolography with more details about how the printer works:
The growing industry of printing with or on food is a fun and quirky one. And throwing chocolate into the mix is just brilliant. Thinking on it now, I am reminded of this quote from Patrick Skene Catling’s The Chocolate Touch: “Chocolate all the time… Chocolate’s best, that’s all. Other things are just food. But chocolate’s chocolate.”
Wacky World of Choc Wednesdays: Chocolate LPs
Over the past few years, a relatively quiet (ha!) trend has developed in the chocolate world, mostly as a collaboration between chocolatiers and indie electronica/industrial rock/experimental pop musicians: chocolate LPs.
These are vinyl records, minus the vinyl, made out of chocolate. They’d be sorta neat on their own (there’s something so irreverent about biting into a fragile object in which much great art has been encoded), but what makes these chocolate records really special is that they actually play music. As in, you can place them on a record player, drop the needle, and then hear sound. Now that is awesome!
Here’s one example, from a charming maker in Berlin, Germany:
And here’s another, where a Fife, Scotland-based chocolatier, Ben Milne, prepared a chocolate LP single for his friends in the band FOUND. The single is “Anti Climb Paint,” and the chocolatey end result plays the song recognizably:
A gem of a quote from Ben: “I heard that vinyl is on the increase and that CDs are on their way out, so chocolate records could be part of a resurgence and people getting their record players out of their attics.” From his lips to God’s ears! (Or Brooklyn!) Also, don’t miss the dreamy video for the song, performed in the Fisher & Donaldson Bakery where Ben works, and depicting a stylized (fictional) making of the chocolate single.
Finally, a team of skeptics from Kerrang! Podcasts went from naysayers to yaysayers when American band Innerpartysystem sent them a chocolate single to try out. Turns out, these records do best when fresh from the refrigerator.
Personally, I’d love a chocolate single of “In a Gadda da Vida,” from Iron Butterfly. My dad, who has the baddest music taste of anyone I know, taught me how to rock out with this song blasting on his record player, way back before the days of cassette tapes, CDs, mp3s, and YouTube. The original version of the song is a little over 17 minutes long, by which point we would most definitely need a snack. Yes, please.
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Bittersweet Notes is an open source research project on chocolate, culture, and the politics of food. I invite you to join me as I explore the story of chocolate and the life stories of those involved with chocolate at its many stages of production and consumption.
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