by Lucy E. Zahnle

Created on: September 15, 2009

A Paean to Chocolate

With one exception, chocolate of any kind is the food that takes my taste buds to the height of heavenly bliss. Whether I am eating milk chocolate, semi-sweet, or dark chocolate, each has a personality all its own and each wins hearts in its own inimitable way.

Milk chocolate, the heart of Hershey bars and Jell-O pudding, is usually a baby's first introduction to chocolate's melty, messy brown sweetness. It conjures childhood memories of giggles over Halloween candy, hot cocoa by a Christmas hearth, and rewards for being good at the grocery store.

Semi-sweet chocolate, typically in the form of the legendary chocolate chip, suggests the simpler joys of everyday living like melting s'mores over a campfire with the Scouts or baking chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen with Grandma. Invented by Ruth Wakefield in 1937, chocolate chip cookies, also known as Toll House cookies, are, perhaps, one of America's greatest traditions. The act of combining chocolate chips and cookie dough is a ritual that has created warm, indelible childhood memories and made kitchens echo with laughter for nearly seventy years.

Where the taste of semi-sweet is homespun and comforting, dark chocolate's flavor is edgy, grown-up, full of mystery and romance. Appealing especially to women as an integral part of a romantic interlude or a private thirty second escape in the midst of a hectic day, dark chocolate mixes the bitter and the sweet of life, speaking to the soul of love and strife, joy, and heartache.

As much as I love chocolate, I confess I do have a prejudice against one kind. Pale and tasteless, but extremely upscale, white chocolate is the exception to chocolate's celebrated reputation. White chocolate, that black sheep of the cocoa family, exudes no charm or enticement, triggers no warm reminiscences or romantic yearnings. It does bring to mind white chocolate Easter Bunnies that I traded away for something that was caramel or milk chocolate; something worth savoring. White chocolate is not really chocolate at all and one waxy bite of this pretender sends me racing back to the creamy embrace of its darker brothers.

That worthier chocolate, brown and creamy and good, binds the heart and mind to a perfect memory; a sublime moment in life when the taste of chocolate highlighted love or joy or reassurance. Whether one chooses milk chocolate with its echoes of childish contentment, the homespun comfort of semi-sweet, dark chocolate's sensuous, romantic dreams, or even white chocolate as a display to impress the neighbors, chocolate, eager to reveal its personality in every glorious bite, will never disappoint.

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