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| Product type | Baking chocolate |
|---|---|
| Owner | Kraft Heinz |
| Produced by | Kraft Foods |
| Introduced | 1780 as Baker Chocolate Company |
| Website | bakers-chocolate.com |
Baker's Chocolate is a brand name for the line of baking chocolates [1] owned by Kraft Heinz. Products include a variety of bulk chocolates, including white and unsweetened, and sweetened coconut flakes. It is one of the largest national brands of chocolate in the United States. The company was originally named Walter Baker & Company.
In 1764, John Hannon (or alternatively spelled "Hannan" in some sources) and the American physician Dr. James Baker started importing beans and producing chocolate in the Lower Mills section of Dorchester, Massachusetts. [2]
After Hannon never returned from a 1779 sailing trip to the West Indies to purchase cocoa beans, his wife sold the company to Baker in 1780, and the company was renamed to the Baker Chocolate Company. [3] His first product was a cake of chocolate for making a sweetened chocolate drink. Distribution was mainly in the Northeastern United States until 1804, when James Baker's son, Edmund Baker, inherited the family business and increased production with a state-of-the-art mill.
The original brand name was "Hannon’s Best Chocolate", which was "manufactured for almost fifteen years" and was sold with a money-back guarantee if the consumer was unsatisfied with the product. [3] The name was changed in 1780 after Hannon's wife, Elizabeth Gore Hannon, sold the company to Baker in 1780, after Hannon never returned from a 1779 sailing trip to the West Indies to purchase cocoa beans. [3] At the time, it was rumored that Hannon intended to leave his wife, and thus deserted her. [3] Original versions of the brand were not prepared for baking, and before 1865, the company purveyed three grades of drinking chocolate, which were "Best Chocolate", "Common Chocolate" and "Inferior Chocolate". [1] The inferior grade was mostly sold to West Indian and American slaves. [1]
By 1849, under Walter Baker, the Baker's Chocolate brand had spread to California, during the Gold Rush era. Production was limited to one kind of chocolate until 1852, when employee Samuel German created "German's Sweet Chocolate" that had a higher sugar content than previous baking chocolates. In 1957 a Dallas, Texas newspaper printed a cake recipe for "German's Chocolate Cake" based on this chocolate, which was reprinted by the company's owner General Foods under the "German chocolate cake, created by Mrs. George Calay", becoming the accepted name.
Production steadily increased through the century. The trademark logo of La Belle Chocolatière was adopted in 1883 by the fourth-generation familial owner, Henry L. Pierce, step-nephew of Walter Baker. Pierce began advertising Baker's Chocolate heavily in newspapers to increase sales. [1] In 1896, Baker's Chocolate was advertising in around 8,000 newspapers in the United States. [1] The company also advertised using signage and cards in grocery stores, in novels, in street cars and using billboards. [1] Promotional offers of tableware and logo pins helped attract customers. Around the late 1800s, the company began promoting the notion of using chocolate as an ingredient in desserts and for baking. [1]
Following Pierce's death in 1896, the Forbes Syndicate bought the company, which they sold In 1927 to the Postum Cereal Company, later known as General Foods. In 1966 production moved from Dorchester, Massachusetts to Dover, Delaware. The company was passed onto Kraft Foods in 1989 when they acquired General Foods. Baker's is now owned by Kraft Heinz, a company formed by the merger between Kraft Foods and Heinz.
Baker's continues to expand its line of products, focusing on conveniences for the home baker. Some products, such as vanilla extract and cocoa powder, have been discontinued with company turnovers. Other products are available to food service professionals in bulk, such as different kinds of coconut, cocoa drinks, and bulk chocolate.
Baker's most common products:
Chocolate or cocoa is a food made from roasted and ground cocoa seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cocoa has been consumed in some form for at least 5,300 years starting with the Mayo-Chinchipe culture in what is present-day Ecuador. Later Mesoamerican civilizations also consumed chocolate beverages, and it was introduced to Europe in the 16th century.
Dessert is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as cake, biscuit, ice cream and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly savory to create desserts. In some parts of the world there is no tradition of a dessert course to conclude a meal.
Confectionery is the art of making confections, or sweet foods. Confections are items that are rich in sugar and carbohydrates although exact definitions are difficult. In general, however, confections are divided into two broad and somewhat overlapping categories: bakers' confections and sugar confections.
A muffin is an individually portioned baked product; however, the term can refer to one of two distinct items: a part-raised flatbread that is baked and then cooked on a griddle, or a quickbread that is chemically leavened and then baked in a mold. While quickbread "American" muffins are often sweetened, there are savory varieties made with ingredients such as corn and cheese, and less sweet varieties like traditional bran muffins. The flatbread "English" variety is of British or other European derivation, and dates from at least the early 18th century, while the quickbread originated in North America during the 19th century. Both types are common worldwide today.
A biscuit, in English-speaking countries such as Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, is a flour-based baked and shaped food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be savoury, similar to crackers. Types of biscuit include sandwich biscuits, digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, Anzac biscuits, biscotti, and speculaas.
Chocolate chips or chocolate morsels are small chunks of sweetened chocolate, used as an ingredient in a number of desserts, in trail mix and less commonly in some breakfast foods such as pancakes. They are often manufactured as teardrop-shaped volumes with flat circular bases; another variety of chocolate chips have the shape of rectangular or square blocks. They are available in various sizes, usually less than 10 millimetres (0.39 in) in diameter.
Entenmann's is an American company that manufactures baked goods and delivers them throughout the United States to supermarkets and other retailers for public sales. Often, they are known to have display cases at the end of store aisles. The company offers dessert, cup, loaf, and crumb cakes, and donuts, cookies, pies, cereal bars, muffins, Danish pastries, and among other baked goods, buns. In the past several years, they have added designer coffee flavors along with scented candles to their product line in an effort to broaden its appeal.
Chocolate cake or chocolate gâteau is a cake flavored with melted chocolate, cocoa powder, or both. It can also have other ingredients such as fudge, vanilla creme, and other sweeteners.
J. S. Fry & Sons, Ltd., better known as Fry's, was a British chocolate company owned by Joseph Storrs Fry and his family. Beginning in Bristol in 1761, the business went through several changes of name and ownership, becoming J. S. Fry & Sons in 1822. In 1847, Fry's produced the first solid chocolate bar. The company also created the first filled chocolate sweet, Cream Sticks, in 1853. Fry is most famous for Fry's Chocolate Cream, the first mass-produced chocolate bar, which was launched in 1866, and Fry's Turkish Delight, launched in 1914.
Chocolate liqueur is a chocolate flavored liqueur made from a base liquor of whisky or vodka. Unlike chocolate liquor, chocolate liqueur contains alcohol. Chocolate liqueur is often used as an ingredient in mixology, baking, and cooking.
Baking chocolate, or cooking chocolate, is chocolate intended to be used for baking and in sweet foods that may or may not be sweetened. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate are produced and marketed as baking chocolate. However, lower quality baking chocolate may not be as flavorful compared to higher-quality chocolate, and may have a different mouthfeel.
CocoaVia is a brand name for a daily cocoa extract supplement. The name CocoaVia is a registered trademark of Mars, Incorporated.
Chocolate is a food product made from roasted and ground cocoa pods mixed with fat and powdered sugar to produce a solid confectionery. There are several types of chocolate, classified primarily according to the proportion of cocoa and fat content used in a particular formulation.
Côte d'Or is a producer of Belgian chocolate, owned by Mondelez International. Côte d'Or was founded in 1883 by Charles Neuhaus in Schaerbeek, Belgium, a chocolate manufacturer who used the name "Côte d'Or" referring to the old name of contemporary Ghana, the source of many of the cacao beans used in chocolate manufacturing.
Barry Callebaut AG is a Swiss-Belgian cocoa processor and chocolate manufacturer, with an average annual production of 2.3 million tonnes of cocoa & chocolate . It was created in 1996 through the merging of the French company Cacao Barry and the Belgian chocolate producer Callebaut. It is currently based in Zürich, Switzerland, and operates in over 30 countries worldwide. It was created in its present form by Klaus Johann Jacobs.
Belizean cuisine is an amalgamation of all ethnicities in the nation of Belize and their respectively wide variety of foods. Breakfast often consists of sides of bread, flour tortillas, or fry jacks that are often homemade and eaten with various cheeses. All are often accompanied with refried beans, cheeses, and various forms of eggs, etc. Inclusive is also cereal along with milk, coffee, or tea.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to chocolate:
The Baker Chocolate Company was an American company that produced chocolate, headquartered in Dorchester, Boston. It was the first company to produce chocolate in the country. Following the deaths of its founders and officers, the company was sold to the Forbes Syndicate in 1896, which carried on the business until it was sold to Postum Cereal in 1927.
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Malagos Agri-Ventures Corporation is a Philippine bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturer based in Davao City.
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