Rachael Narins

Speculoos Chocolate Bar

If you recall, a few months ago we waxed rhapsodic about Trader Joe's Speculoos, a product that is, essentially, smooshed cookies in a jar. Imagine asking a 5-year-old, "What's your dream sandwich spread?" and lo, it came true. Now, TJ's has taken that sugar rush to an even further extreme, introducing speculoos-filled dark chocolate bars.

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Guzzle & Nosh/Flickr

Compartes truffles

First robots that can build sushi rolls, now machines that can print in chocolate: According to Fast Company, United Kingdom company Choc Edge is now accepting pre-orders for the "world's first commercial 3-D chocolate printer." For the discounted price of £2,488 (about $4,000, or 47 boxes of 40-piece truffles at Compartes), you'll receive the Choc Creator Version 1, which will print almost any object you desire using melted chocolate instead of ink, no special moldings or castings required.

Three-dimensional printing has been around for a few years; doctors recently used a 3-D printer to "print" a prosthetic jaw, for instance, and MakerBot sells a home version that prints all sorts of objects with a durable plastic instead of ink. This naturally has compelled some researchers to experiment with printing food like "domes of turkey" and corn chips; most of those printers, however, are still stuck in the test kitchen. With its desktop Choc Creator, Choc Edge hopes to capture the attention of "creative users who love to experience new technologies, exploit broad technical settings and boundaries of the printer, and having a lot of fun with their creations." And don't mind dropping a few thousand bucks for the pleasure.

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Mary & Matt

Chocolate Pie Chart

Had there been a chocolate pie chart when we were growing up, we might have learned to do math. Instead we had cryptic train equations and SOCATOA, and thus pursued English degrees at liberal arts colleges. So while we still haven't quite figured out how to do income taxes, we have a few dozen adjectives to describe the wonders of the Chocolate Pie Chart, a fitting and deserved thank-you present for whomever you guilted into doing your filing.

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Flickr/in pastel

Eating chocolate bunnies might make you slimmer

Katharine Hepburn once attributed her slim figure to "a lifetime of chocolate." Now a new study from UC San Diego has found that people who eat chocolate on a regular basis are indeed thinner than those who don't. The findings from the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, were published in the Archives of Internal Medicine Monday.

Researchers examined dietary and other data from about 1,000 adult men and women. They found that adults who ate chocolate on more days a week had a lower body mass index and lower weight than those who ate chocolate less frequently. The size of the effect was modest but "significant" -- larger than could be explained by chance. This was despite the fact that those who ate chocolate more often did not eat fewer calories (they actually ate more, including more saturated fat), nor did they exercise more. Participants' age and gender also did not affect the results. The effect worked out to a five- to seven-pound difference between people who ate five servings of chocolate per week compared to those who didn't eat any.

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Flickr/murphyz

110-pound chocolate egg

Thank you, Easter Bunny!

London-based chocolatier William Curley has cracked a Guinness World Record by crafting the most expensive non-jeweled chocolate egg ever sold at auction, according to London & Partners. The 110-pound confection sold for more than $10,000 (you could buy about 10,000 Cadbury crème eggs with that) to technology investor Cyrus Vandrevala. Not only did the egg break the bank, that sweet monolith would totally bust your Easter basket.

It took seven skilled chocolatiers at Curley's Twickenham production kitchen three days to handcraft the massive ova using Amadei chocolate from the Chuao region of Venezuela, famous for being what many consider the best chocolate in the world.

The egg is filled with Curley favorites that have all won gold awards from the Academy of Chocolate, including muscovado caramel, Japanese black vinegar, rosemary and olive oil, toasted sesame and juniper berry and cassis. The egg is accented with edible gold leaf, and was "hidden" by what must have been a gargantuan were-rabbit at Fortnum and Mason.

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Flickr/Schoko-Riegel

The king-size Snickers bar is going the way of the woolly mammoth.

Shrink-size me? Candy bar maker Mars Inc. has announced that it is doing away with king-size candy bars. The company says that by the end of 2013, it will only sell chocolate products that have 250 calories per portion, the Chicago Tribune reports.

While some might see the move as a cost-saving measure, Mars insists the action is part of a health-and-nutrition effort. Questions that come to mind: Should a candy company really be concerning itself with health and nutrition? Shouldn't it leave that to the tofu makers? And, doesn't this mean that a person will just buy more candy bars and thus spend more than he would have on a king-size candy bar?

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photo credit: Janne in Osaka

Jurassic Chocolat

Valentine's gifting is especially tricky for women. You want your gift to tell him how you feel, without telling him how you feel. (Not because you're cryptic or unsure of how you really feel, but because he's not a heart-shaped box kind of guy and lacy pink things don't fit either and anyway that's what cards are for, right?)

The process is simplified in Japan, where Valentine's Day is celebrated by one-way gifting: women to men, only. Honmei choco, or prospective winner chocolate for special someones, and giri choko, obligation chocolates, for male bosses and coworkers. Naturally the options are more dude-worthy, the messages more specific. Because why give a heart when your feelings would be better described with a chocolate bug? Turn the page for four of our favorite Japanese Valentine's Day chocolates.

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Anjuli Ayer

Cocoa is a source of phytochemical compounds that have potential health benefits.

If we didn't know better, we'd swear this study was funded by a syndicate of chocolate producers, but we don't like to look too skeptically at research that reinforces our notions of how the world should be.

A recent study on rats has for the first time confirmed that flavonoids such as those found in cocoa can potentially have a protective effect against colon cancer. Headed by scientists from the Institute of Food Science and Technology and Nutrition (ICTAN), the study was recently published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research.

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amazon

When a chocolate-obsessed book was originally published in French with the more fitting title Encyclopédie du Chocolat, you can make a pretty solid bet that you'll soon be spending a lot of time between those 400+ pages of cocoa nib ice cream, hot chocolate mousse verrine, and fresh blueberry and raspberry-laced bittersweet chocolate bar recipes.

When that same chocolate book, Cooking With Chocolate: Essential Recipes and Techniques, edited by chocolatier Frédéric Bau, includes a Forward by Pierre Hermé, you know it's going to be Paris chocolate-shop worthy. (Bau worked with Hermé before founding the École du Grand Chocolat Valrhona in France, where he is still the executive pastry chef.)

It's the sort of cookbook that causes you to reconsider your favorite chocolate mousse recipe. And not because that bittersweet version on p. 186 is so revolutionary.

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Jeanne Kelley

chocolate bark

Need a gift in a hurry? Why not make bark? Chocolate bark is a wonder of a confection -- it's quick to make, it looks cool and is adaptable to every taste -- at least of course for those who's tastes include chocolate. The candy can be made in about 30 minutes flat and the elegantly shattered tree-bark like pieces require no special equipment or even skill.

To make bark, you spread melted chocolate into a thin layer on a foil, waxed-paper or parchment-lined pan, sprinkle it with a topping, and freeze. Once firm, you break it into randomly sized shards. Toppings can include toasted or candied nuts, dried fruit or candy. The flavor combos can go from high to low. Get sophisticated with toasted walnuts, a sprinkle of anise seeds and thin slivers of dried fig on a base of extra bittersweet chocolate. Got a friend that loves peppermint? Sprinkle on some crushed Starlight mints. Butterfingers? Ditto. Gummi Bears? You got it.

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