EARLY HISTORY OF CHOCOLATE:

The earliest record of chocolate was over a thousand years ago in the South American rain forests, around the Amazon and Essequibo rivers, where the tropical mix of high rain fall combined with high year round temperatures and humidity provide the ideal climate for cultivation of the Cacao Tree. This tree has paved the way for todays chocolate candy,gourmet chocolate,chocolate fudge, white chocolate,peanut butter fudge,homemade candy,homemade fudge,mackinac island fudge and mackinaw island fudge . The tree was worshipped by the Mayan civilization who believed it to be of divine origin, hence it's generic Latin name meaning ‘Food of the Gods’. Cacao is a Mayan word meaning "God Food"; Cacao was later corrupted into the more familiar 'Cocoa' by Europeans. The Maya brewed a bitter sweet drink by roasting and pounding cocoa beans with maize and Capsicum peppers and letting the mixture ferment, for use in ceremonies as well as for drinking by the wealthy and religious elite, they also ate a Cacao porridge. They would have not had the slightest clue that these cacaos would take the form of chocolate candy, gourmet chocolate, homemade fudge and its varieties. The Aztecs who came after the Mayan's also prized the beans highly, but because the Aztec civilization was at higher altitudes in the Andes, the climate was not suitable for cultivation of the tree, so they acquired the beans through trade and the spoils of war. The Aztecs used them as currency - 100 beans could buy a Turkey or a slave - and tribute or Taxes were paid in cocoa beans to the Aztec emperors. The Aztecs, like the Mayans before them, also enjoyed Cacao only as a beverage made from the raw beans which featured prominently in ritual and as a luxury available only to the very wealthy. The Aztecs called this drink Xocolatl, the Spanish conquistadors found this almost impossible to pronounce and so corrupted it to Chocolat, and the English further changed this to Chocolate. We widely use chocolates just not as a drink but as chocolate candy,gourmet chocolate,chocolate fudge,chocolate gift basket,white chocolate,peanut butter fudge,homemade candy,homemade fudge,mackinac island fudge and mackinaw island fudge and lot more.

The Aztec Emperor, Montezuma - who is quoted as saying of Xocolatl: "The divine drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food" - regarded it as an aphrodisiac and reputedly drank it fifty times a day from a golden goblet. In fact, the Aztec's prized Xocolatl well above Gold and Silver so much so, that when Montezuma was defeated by Cortez in 1519 and the victorious 'conquistadors' searched his palace expecting to find Gold & Silver, all they found were huge quantities of cocoa beans. The Aztec Treasury consisted, not of precious metals, but Cocoa Beans.

Xocolatl! or Chocolat or Chocolate as it became known, was first brought to Europe by Cortez, by this time the conquistadors had learned to make the drink more palatable to European tastes by mixing the ground roasted beans with sugar and vanilla, thus offsetting the bitterness of the Aztec drink. These form the base ingredients for todays chocolate candy,gourmet chocolate,chocolate fudge, ,white chocolate,peanut butter fudge,homemade candy,homemade fudge,mackinac island fudge and mackinaw island fudge .

The first chocolate factories soon opened in Spain, where the dried fermented beans brought back from the new world were roasted and ground, and by the early 17th century chocolate powder - from which the European version of the drink was made - was being exported to other parts of Europe. The Spanish kept the source of the drink - the beans - a secret for many years, so successfully in fact, that when English buccaneers boarded what they thought was a Spanish 'Treasure Galleon' in 1579, only to find it loaded with what appeared to be 'dried sheep's droppings', they burned the whole ship in frustration. If only they had known, chocolate was so expensive at that time, it was worth it's weight in Silver, if not Gold, Treasure Indeed! They could have then made tons of chocolate candy, gourmet chocolate, homemade fudge, white chocolate, homemade candy, peanut butter candy and a lot more.

Within a few years, the Cocoa beverage made from the powder produced in Spain had become popular throughout Europe, first in the Spanish Netherlands then Italy, France, Germany and - in about 1520 - it arrived in England. The first Chocolate House in England opened in London in 1657 followed rapidly by many others. Like the already well established coffee houses they were used as clubs where the wealthy and business community met to smoke a clay pipe of tobacco, conduct business and socialize over a cup of chocolate.

Event's went full circle when English colonists (Quakers maybe?) carried chocolate (and coffee) with them to England's colonies in North America. Destined to become the United States of America and Canada, they are now the worlds largest consumers - by far - of both Chocolate and Coffee, consuming over half of the words total production of chocolate.

Chocolate was first eaten in solid form when bakers in England began adding cocoa powder to cakes in the mid 1600's. In 1828 a Dutch chemist, Johannes Van Houten, invented a method of extracting the bitter tasting fat or "cocoa butter" from the roasted ground beans, his aim was to make the drink smoother and more palatable, however he unknowingly paved the way for chocolate as we know it. Chocolate as we know it today first appeared in 1847 when Fry & Sons - founded 1728 in Bristol, England - mixed Sugar with Cocoa Powder and Cocoa Butter to produce the first solid chocolate bar then, in 1875 a Swiss manufacturer, Daniel Peters, found a way to combine (some would say improve) cocoa powder and cocoa butter with sugar and dried milk powder to produce the first milk chocolate. and the rest, is history.... This forms the base for all the varieties of chocolates, fudge and candy be it Mackinac island fudge, peanut butter fudge, white chocolate, homemade candy or chocolate gift baskets.