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There are few things in life that are as widely adored as chocolate. Whether it’s your absolute favourite, or just a tasty treat from time to time, chocolate has a place in everyone’s heart! But that doesn’t mean that we know too much about it.
If you dig a little deeper into chocolate, you’ll not only find out plenty of interesting facts about where it first came from, but that it has been involved in some pretty crazy goings on throughout the years.
Here at Wholesale Sweets, it’s fair to say that we’re big fans of chocolate. So, we dove head first into the mountains of trivia surrounding the delicious stuff and have gathered a list of questions to tease your minds. For the best experience, why not quiz with friends, perhaps with some chocolate prizes on hand? You know, to really get the best out of it!
1. Chocolate is made with cacao beans. The tree these grow on is called Theobroma Cacao, but what does that mean?
a. Edible gold
b. Food of the gods
c. Magic beans
2. Archaeologists have found traces of chocolate in the ancient Mayo-Chinchipe culture in Ecuador. But how long ago was this?
a. 5,000 years ago
b. 2,000 years ago
c. 500 years ago
3. Both the Mayan and Mexican cultures would regularly consume chocolate. But in what form?
a. Raw cacao beans
b. Baked in a bread
c. Hot chocolate
4. Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter perfected his recipe for the first milk chocolate in 1875. But how long had he been working on it?
a. Eight weeks
b. Eight months
c. Eight years
5. Nowadays, African farmers produce around 70% of the world’s cacao for chocolate. But which African country produces the most today?
a. Cote d’Ivoire
b. Ghana
c. Cameroon
6. Which of these countries consumes the most chocolate, on average, a year?
a. Belgium
b. Switzerland
c. America
7. The film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was funded to promote a new chocolate bar by which food manufacturing company?
a. Quaker Oats
b. Nestle
c. Hershey’s
8. The process of making chocolate is labour intensive, not least because of the amount of cocoa beans it requires! Just how many does it take to make 1 pound of chocolate?
a. 300 beans
b. 400 beans
c. 500 beans
9. Everybody has heard of the Snickers bar – it’s a stalwart in the Mars range! But when it was first named in the 1930s, what did Frank and Ethel Mars name it after?
a. Their cat
b. Their dog
c. Their horse
10. Which British chocolate brand was it that produced the first solid bar of chocolate in 1847?
a. Fry and Sons
b. Cadbury
c. Buchanan’s
Here are some of our favourite chocolate trivia that didn’t make the quiz, but we just had to share! Thousands of years ago in Mayan civilisation cacao beans were used as currency! Yep, the very thing you need to make chocolate. The Aztecs couldn’t grow the plants in their homeland as it was too dry, so when they encountered the Mayans, they traded with them to get the cacao they wanted.
Another mind-blowing chocolate fact is the sheer size of the world’s biggest bar. It was created in 2011 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Thornton’s chocolate. It was a 4-metre square that was over a foot thick and weighed an incredible 5,792.5kg! How long would it take you to finish that?
Scientists have also found proof that chocolate can be good for you in a whole host of ways. Dark chocolate can help protect our teeth, whilst chocolate also releases a chemical in our brains that makes us more relaxed.
Last but not least, a man befriended security guards at an Antwerp bank by visiting regularly and gifting them with chocolates. This was part of how they got past the advanced security systems to steal $28 million of diamonds!
1. b. The name Theobroma Cacao means ‘food of the gods’- many ancient civilisations believed the cocoa plant had healing properties and also held it in spiritual regard. It was a part of many Mayan celebrations and ceremonies, whilst the Aztecs thought that it was given to them by the gods.
2. a. The earliest traces of cacao were discovered in the clay pots of the Mayo-Chinchipe culture from well over 5,000 years ago. This means that previous theories of chocolate’s origins being in Mexico and Central America no longer seem to be the case, with evidence in Ecuador spanning almost 1,500 years further back!
3. c. Both ancient Mexican and Mayan cultures enjoyed a hot chocolate… of sorts. Grinding roasted cacao beans to a pulse, then mixing with spices and hot water, the drink was often part of celebrations and ceremonies. They saw it as a source of energy and an aphrodisiac. It’s different from the hot chocolate we have today, but it doesn’t sound all that bad.
4. c. Formerly a candle-maker, Daniel Peter was a Swiss chocolatier who spent a whopping eight years perfecting the first recipe for milk chocolate. When he solved the conundrum in 1875, it was with a little help from his friend Henri Nestle who had a process for making condensed milk. A few years later, Peter formed a partnership with his friend, forming the Nestle Company, which is still going strong today. It’s fair to say that milk chocolate is, too!
5. a. More than a third of the cocoa produced on the African continent comes from Cote d’Ivoire. For each of the last three years, the West African country has produced more than 2 million metric tonnes! Ghana is comfortably second place but doesn’t produce half as much.
6. b. According to a study from 2017, Switzerland eats the most chocolate, with figures of 8.8kg per person a year! Austria were second at 8.1kg, whilst Germans ate 7.9kg on average. The UK was next with 7.6kg, whilst Belgium and America were lower than you may have expected with 5.6 and 4.4kg respectively.
7. a. Surprisingly it was Quaker Oats! They were releasing a Wonka branded chocolate bar and funded the movie as advertisement. That’s why the title changed from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory like Roald Dahl’s book to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The marketing push began as the film was released, but the chocolate bars didn’t stay on sale for long – the formula was wrong and they melted on the shelves!
8. b. 400 beans – that’s how much cacao it takes to make one pound of chocolate. Which equates to roughly 450g of chocolate, so a bit more than a sharing bar! Each cacao tree will produce in the region of 30 to 60 pods per year, with each pod containing about 40 beans. Cacao pods are harvested by hand, and a cacao tree won’t produce pods for the first five years, so you’ve got to be patient as a cacao farmer!
9. c. The Mars family named the Snickers bar after their horse. Snickers the horse died just before they launched the nutty bar in 1930 and they saw it as a fitting tribute. The bar was called Marathon in the UK, because the Mars family became aware that the original name rhymed with the word knickers. The company did decide to use uniform naming in the ‘90s.
10. a. Frys and Sons, who also made the first moulded Easter egg in 1873, produced the first solid chocolate bar at their factory in Bristol. Joseph Fry mixed cocoa powder, sugar and cocoa into a paste which he then moulded into a solid bar. A solid Cadbury chocolate bar soon followed two years later.
Just in case you need a tie break, here’s a bonus question. If you’re still tied after this, perhaps you could flip a chocolate coin?
Question: A pastry chef accidentally created a new kind of chocolate when he left some white chocolate to roast in a bain-marie for a few hours. It was on the heat for much longer than intended and went through a chemical reaction. Now made on purpose, what is the name of this type of chocolate?
a. Toffee chocolate
b. Blonde chocolate
c. Burnt chocolate
The browned white chocolate is called blonde chocolate. With the prolonged exposure to heat, the chocolate went through a process similar to caramelisation and gained flavours reminiscent of shortbread, toffee and butterscotch. It sounds amazing, doesn’t it?!
If you’re now feeling peckish, then don’t worry, we’ve got you covered here at Wholesale Sweets. Our comprehensive range includes everything from chocolate pick n mix to sharing bags and chocolate boxes – we also have amazing vegan chocolate choices, too! As always, we strive to deliver the best of the wholesale experience right to your door. Simply find the treats you’re looking for and then wait for your chocolate delivery in the comfort of your own home.
