Chocolate or cocoa is a food made from roasted and ground cacao seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cacao has been consumed in some form since at least the Olmec civilization, and the majority of Mesoamerican people, including the Maya and Aztecs, made chocolate beverages.
Confectionery is the art of making confections, which are food items that are rich in sugar and carbohydrates. Exact definitions are difficult. In general, however, confectionery is divided into two broad and somewhat overlapping categories: bakers' confections and sugar confections. The occupation of confectioner encompasses the categories of cooking performed by both the French patissier and the confiseur.
The Hershey Company, commonly known as Hershey's, is an American multinational company and one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the world. It also manufactures baked products, such as cookies and cakes, and sells beverages like milkshakes, as well as other products. Its headquarters are in Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States, which is also home to Hersheypark and Hershey's Chocolate World. It was founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1894 as the Hershey Chocolate Company, which was a subsidiary of his Lancaster Caramel Company. The Hershey Trust Company owns a minority stake but retains a majority of the voting power within the company.
A chocolate bar or candy bar is a confection containing chocolate, which may also contain layerings or mixtures that include nuts, fruit, caramel, nougat, and wafers. A flat, easily breakable, chocolate bar is also called a tablet. In some varieties of English and food labeling standards, the term chocolate bar is reserved for bars of solid chocolate, with candy bar used for products with additional ingredients.
The Heath bar is a candy bar made of toffee, almonds, and milk chocolate, first manufactured by the Heath Brothers Confectionery in 1928. Since its acquisition of the Leaf International North American confectionery operations late in 1996, the Heath bar has been manufactured and distributed by Hershey.
Reese's Take 5 is a candy bar that was released by The Hershey Company in December 2004. The original name of the candy bar was TAKE5 but common usage among consumers added a space. In June 2019, when the candy bar became part of the Reese's family, the name was officially changed to Reese's Take 5.
Chocolate-covered raisins are a candy consisting of individual raisins coated in a shell of milk, dark or white chocolate.
Milk Duds are a brand of chocolate-coated caramel candies produced by The Hershey Company. The candy is a caramel disk covered with a confectionery chocolate coating made from cocoa and vegetable oil. Milk Duds are sold in a yellowish-orange box.
"Big Chocolate" is a business term assigned to multi-national chocolate food producers, akin to the terms "Big Oil," "Big Pharma," and "Big Tobacco".
Harry Burnett Reese was an American inventor and businessman known for creating the number one-selling candy brand in the United States Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and founding the H. B. Reese Candy Company. In 2009, he was posthumously inducted into the Candy Hall of Fame.
Compound chocolate is a product made from a combination of cocoa, vegetable fat and sweeteners. It is used as a lower-cost alternative to pure chocolate, as it uses less-expensive hard vegetable fats such as coconut oil or palm kernel oil in place of the more expensive cocoa butter. It may also be known as "compound coating" or "chocolatey coating" when used as a coating for candy. It is often used in less expensive chocolate bars to replace enrobed chocolate on a product.
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.
Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme is a candy bar manufactured by The Hershey Company and first introduced in 1994.
Goetze's Candy Company, Inc. is an American confectionery company based in Baltimore, Maryland specializing in caramel-based candies. Goetze's was established in 1895 as the Baltimore Chewing Gum Company by August Goetze and his son, William. In 1917, the family developed a soft, caramel candy which ultimately evolved into their signature candy, Caramel Creams, a soft chewy caramel with cream filling in the center. Each candy is packaged in a clear wrapper and twisted at two red and white ends.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to chocolate:
An enrober is a machine used in the confectionery industry to coat a food item with a coating medium, typically chocolate. Foods that are coated by enrobers include nuts, ice cream, toffee, chocolate bars, biscuits and cookies. Enrobing with chocolate extends a confection's shelf life.
The Warrell Corporation is a confectionery and snack food manufacturing company based in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.
CAOBISCO is the Association of Chocolate, Biscuits and Confectionery (French: Association Communautaire des Industries de la Chocolaterie, Biscuiterie industries of Europe. Created in 1959 in Paris, the association has been based in Brussels since 1985.
Kisses is a term used in the United States and Canada to describe various items of small sugar confectionery, defined by their shape rather than a similar recipe. The most famous brand using this name is Hershey's Kisses, which were first produced in the US in 1907. It is sometimes applied to confections with a hard exterior and a soft filling, such as chocolate-dipped marshmallows, or two small biscuits or cookies sandwiched together with a soft icing. There are corresponding terms in other countries, such as the Italian bocconetti di mandorla and the Indian cool kiss.
Ruby chocolate is a style or distinct variety of chocolate that is pinkish or purple in colour. Barry Callebaut, a Belgian–Swiss cocoa company, introduced it as a distinct product on 5 September 2017 after beginning development of their product in 2004. It has a pink color, and Barry Callebaut says it is a fourth natural type of chocolate. Some other industry experts have said that some cacao pods are naturally pink or purple in colour, and thus pink chocolate has been available before.
