Chocolate & Candy Trivia

Chocolate starts as bitter seeds inside a pod and only becomes a smooth bar after fermenting, roasting, grinding, and hours of mechanical working. Candy in general is mostly a set of tricks for controlling how sugar crystallizes.

This quiz covers where chocolate comes from and the steps that turn raw cacao into something you would want to eat.

From Bean to Bar

A few key facts define real chocolate.

• Chocolate is made from the seeds of the cacao tree, whose scientific name means "food of the gods."
• White chocolate contains cocoa butter but no cocoa solids, which is why it is not brown.
• The Maya and Aztecs mostly drank cacao as a bitter beverage, often spiced.
• Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa producer today.

Making It Smooth

Texture is where chocolate making gets technical.

• Conching is prolonged mixing and grinding that smooths the chocolate and mellows its flavor.
• Tempering is careful heating and cooling that gives finished chocolate its gloss and snap.
• Milton Hershey built a company town around his chocolate factory in Pennsylvania.
• Cotton candy is simply sugar heated and spun into fine threads.