Planning Your Holiday Fundraising?

It's that time of year again: time to think about how you'll bring in the funds you need for the Parent Teacher Organization, the Junior League, the symphony, the soccer team, or the company service project.

May we suggest Sweetique Eggs? These real eggshells filled with mouthwatering chocolate are the perfect choice. As you can see, they'll look great with your logo or your organization's motto.

They also make egg-celent holiday decorations and corporate gifts.



Call us at (888) 4LOGOEGG to get all the details.

Lovely Skin -- from Chocolate?

Flavanol-rich cocoa makes skin moister and smoother, and reduces redness too. Its strong anti-oxidant properties help to maintain the skin's general health as well as to prevent visible signs of aging such as wrinkling.

Researchers tested the effect of flavanols in beverages. However, they also wrote that the amount of flavanols in the test drinks "are similar to those found in 100 grams of dark chocolate."

Controlled testing found that the flavanols increased skin thickness, blood flow, and hydration, and reduced reddening in response to UV rays.

"This study demonstrates that the regular consumption of a beverage rich in flavanols can confer substantial photoprotection as well as help maintain skin health by improving skin structure and function," wrote the researchers in the new issue of the Journal of Nutrition (Vol 136, pp 1565-1569).

Chocolate protects you from sunburn? It seems to be the case. We're not saying you should give up your sunscreen, but it's nice to know that eating delicious chocolate may help reduce the risk of melanoma and other UV-related dangers.

Polyphenols, including the catechins found in cocoa, can actually absorb UV light. The compounds can also reduce reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are formed during photo-oxidation.

As with all of chocolate's health benefits, these effects come not from sugar but from cocoa -- the chocolate itself. You can't expect to see lovelier skin from grabbing a low-cocoa candy bar out of the vending machine. Stick with real chocolate to see the health benefits.

Chocolate for Muscle Recovery

Chocolate milk may help you recover after a hard workout. In a small study at Indiana University, elite cyclists who drank chocolate milk between workouts scored better on fatigue and endurance tests than those who had sports drinks.

A new study from James Madison University presented at the American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting found similar results in soccer players. Not only did the chocolate drinkers recover as quickly as those who went with specially-formulate sports drinks, they also showed less muscle damage over the length of the study than those who drank the sports drinks.

A growing body of evidence suggests that lowfat chocolate milk is the perfect sports drink -- and it's both more nutritious and less expensive than the alternatives!

Spicy Chocolate?

Readers questioned the idea of adding spices to chocolate, but spicy chocolate was the earliest kind. Aztec and Mayan chocolate normally included hot peppers. Europeans made chocolate into a sweet centuries later.

You can find spicy readymade chocolate. Ecuadorean peppered chocolate, ginger and wasabi chocolate bars, and chili pepper truffles are all available by mail, if not at your corner grocery.

You can also make your own. Try those grownup hot chocolate drinks, of course, but you can also bake with spices and chocolate:

• Jalapeno and Chocolate Cake
• Rachael Ray's Chili Brownies
• Cayenne Chocolate Chip Cookies
  
• Chocolate Mousse with Chipotle Sauce
• Chocolate Covered Ginger

Full disclosure: we haven't tried any of these recipes yet. Let us know how you like them!

Economic Downturn? Have Some Chocolate!

While economists in the U.S. and the EU are cautiously optimistic about the future, there are some industries that haven't suffered from the economic downturn, and chocolate is one of them.

The housing industry, the auto industry, and appliance manufacturing may be losing sales, but people are still enjoying high-quality chocolate.

Along with makeup, beer, and high-end blue jeans, gourmet chocolate continues to appeal to shoppers even when they decide to wait another year to replace the washing machine.

It makes sense.



A jar of Love Rocks sets you back only a few dollars, and gives a sense of luxury without spoiling your budget.

If you're ready to follow those optomistic economists' advice and start investing again, chocolate's a good choice.

Cacao

Theobroma cacao, the Food of the Gods. This was the name given to the chocolate plant -- the cacao tree -- by Linnaeus.

Cacao is an evergreen tree, 15 to 25 feet tall, that keeps leave, fruit, and flowers all year, just as the orange tree does. Just like the orange tree, the cacao tree's special growth habit led people to associate it with fertility. No one carries the flowers at weddings, though; the blossoms of a chocolate tree are small and have no scent.

The fruit is pretty spectacular, though. The pods grow to be two feet long, and are full of the cacao beans that produce the raw material for real chocolate.

Cacao grows in equatorial regions, primarily in Africa and South and Central America. More than a million tons of cocoa beans are harvested each year worldwide.

Bento Snack

Sweetique Eggs fit perfectly into your bento snack box!

Here's one in perfect color harmony with fresh blueberries and summer squash sticks.

The Sweetique Egg

Sweetique Eggs are real, natural eggshells, carefully sterilized to the most stringent standards and filled with our special blend of dark and milk chocolate with hazelnuts. You can crack and peel them just as you would a hard-boiled egg -- but the wonderful chocolate experience waiting for you inside is much more exciting than a hardboiled egg.

We make these eggs in bright colors and patterns for holidays. But you can also have them custom-printed with your company logo or your organization's message. The result is a very memorable -- and surprisingly affordable -- promotional or fundraising item. Call us at 888.4LOGO.EGG to discuss your organization's needs.

Chocolate made with Camel's Milk

There's milk chocolate, there's dark chocolate, there's the delicious combination of the two that characterizes our Sweetique chocolate-filled eggshells.

Have you considered chocolate made with camel's milk?

Camel's milk is lower in fat than cow's milk, salty and sharp flavored, and has what one reviewer called a "mysterious bitter aftertaste." Camels are also less placid than cows, and less willing to be milked.

Camel's milk can be an important source of fluids and vitamin C in the desert, but large-scale farming of dairy camels seems impractical. One Mideastern chocolate maker, however, is betting that the novelty value of camel's milk chocolate will make their product popular.

Al Nassma, the Dubai chocolate company, ships powdered camel's milk to Austria, where a chocolatier produces chocolate from the milk and ships the product back to Dubai. The project is said to have the backing of Dubai's royal family.

Chocolate as a Classroom Theme

The very first thing to do, when you first start thinking about using the theme, is to write off to chocolate companies explaining that you plan to do this in your classroom. They will send you things, but it can take some time, so don't delay.

Use these items to make a table or a bulletin board for your chocolate theme. You could also cover your bulletin board in chocolate brown paper and plaster it with chocolate wrappers.

How you acquire those chocolate wrappers is up to you, but we think you could get helpers if you ask around the common room.

Bring out your chocolate books. Here are some of our favorites:

• Candy Freak, by Steve Almond, has some fine economics lessons, and is a fun read. Choose some paragraphs to read aloud for younger classrooms, and let secondary-level students enjoy it for extended reading.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,by Roald Dahl, is a classic. If your class has already read it, consider the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
• The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier, brings up some serious discussion points.
The Chocolate Touch, by Patrick Skene Catling, is a chocolaty take on the Midas story.
• Chocolate Fever, by Robert Kimmel Smith, is one of the most popular elementary read-aloud chapter books.
• The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie and Michael Cole is a wonderful resource and will answer all your questions about chocolate's exciting past.

Here are some handy general links

• The Chocolate Manufacturer's Association has lots of useful stuff, including a discussion of social responsibility in cocoa production, instructions for doing a chocolate taste test, and health information.
• Classroom teacher Beck Settlemoir has compiled a list of chocolate activity ideas.
• An Ecuadoran site on chocolate has lots of information, from a somewhat different perspective.
• The Chocolate Museum in Cologne is fun to explore.
  

Math

• You can count and work out math procolate candies . Here is a page of ideas.
• Here is a lesson using Jerry Pallotta's Hershey's Fraction Book.
• Recipes give good opportunities to practice fractions, and there are so many chocolate recipes available that you will have no difficulty in finding numerous examples.

Science

• The Exploratorium's Chocolate site includes science and social studies connections.
• Work with candy bar nutrition labels. Of course you could go buy lots of candy bars and eat them in order to gather wrappers, but you can also go to Brad Kent's site and find 600 examples.
• Chemistry and botany tables on chocolate will give good practice in reading tables, and a rare resource for classification of a plant rather than an animal.
• "The Physical Chemistry of Making Fudge" is an excellent article and will have even more meaning if you follow it up by making some fudge the old-fashioned way. This is practical physical science.

Social Studies

• Learn about the History of Chocolate. This is a topic that lends itself to so many studies, including continents, culture contact, explorers, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, technology, inventions, New World civilizations, economics... in short, something for everyone. This link has lots of background information, and lots of reproducible PDF files, too.
• Add items from this Timeline of Chocolate to your classroom timeline. There are a few slightly racy entries.
• If you have written to manufacturers for information, you may find that you have multiple versions of chocolate history. Sharpen research skills by checking and synthesizing them all and compiling the most accurate history of chocolate possible.
• A set of lesson plan ideas designed to "internationalize" your curriculum.

Chocolate and Your Health: Fats

Chocolate, as we know, has health benefits comparable to those of any dark vegetable: it contains antioxidant flavonoids with beneficial cardiovascular properties. Chocolate's proven health benefits effects include antioxidant activity, vasodilation and blood pressure reduction, inhibition of platelet activity, and decreased inflammation.

Should we all push aside that spinach salad and reach for the triple chocolate mousse -- or a World's Sweetest Egg? Isn't chocolate a high fat food?

The good news about fat in chocolate is that chocolate contains a fairly even distribution of these three types of fats:

• Oleic Acid is the healthy monounsaturated fat found in olive oil.
• Stearic Acid is a saturated fat, but it is converted by the body almost entirely into oleic acid, and has been shown to have neutral health effects.
  
• Palmitic Acid is also a saturated fat, also found in palm oil. It may increase risk of heart disease and stroke. Studies on this particular substance are inconclusive, since its health effects seem to depend the means of processing and also by the other elements of the subject's diet.

Cocoa beans are about 50% fat, and good quality eating chocolate certainly will be fairly high in fat. If you do the math, though, you'll see that the quantity of palmitic acid -- the one to worry about -- will not be large. In fact, if you have a piece of lean beef or chicken for dinner and end your meal with good-quality chocolate, the saturated fat in your meal comes primarily from the meat, not the chocolate.

We're talking about good-quality chocolate here. If you're eating low-grade chocolates composed of 10% or less actual chocolate, plus tropical or hydrogenated oils, you can't expect the health benefits of cocoa.

Global Chocolate Stats

You've always wondered, haven't you? Who, in all the world, is the most dedicated to chocolate?

Here in the Italian grocery where this picture was taken, it seemed to me that almost everything except the pasta was chocolate.

On the other hand, in Mexico even the chicken may have chocolate in the sauce. And in France, you can see little children eating bars of chocolate tucked into bread.

So who are the chocolate champs?

Western Europe is the hands-down global winner.

Germany is #1. Our chocolate-filled real eggshells -- the World's Sweetest Eggs -- are made in Germany, so of course we were not surprised to find Germany in the winner's circle. Here are the top ten chocolate consuming countries, counting by per-capita consumption:

• Germany
• Belgium
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• Austria
• Norway
• Denmark
• France
• Finland
• Sweden

Other continents didn't make it into the top ten, but North America and Australia turn up in the top... um... fourteen, along with Italy.

• United States
• Australia
• Italy
  
• Canada

Clearly, I was wrong about Italy.

New Trend: Chocolate Crafts!

Handmade News reported that there's a new trend in crafts: chocolate.

People are making chocolate soap and spa goodies, chocolate-scented jewelry, and chocolate-inspired clothing.

I saw chocolate potpourri in a Parisian coffee store, and it seems that the idea of bringing that wonderful scent into the home is becoming popular in the U.S. now too.

Want to make something yourself? Here are some fun ideas we've found for you:

• Chocolate spoons for stirring coffee or cocoa
• Chocolate soap
  
• Chocolate-scented clay
• Chocolate lip balm
• Chocolate-espresso candle
• Chocolate sugar scrub
• Knitted cap proclaiming your love of chocolate
• Knitted chocolate bar

You can't eat these things, but they could still be fun.

Buying Chocolate Filled Real Eggshells Online

World's Sweetest Fun chocolate-filled real eggshells make terrific corporate gifts, promotional items, and fundraising tools.

But you may be wondering whether it's practical to order them online.

These unique chocolates are made in Germany with a very special process that can't be duplicated in the United States. Real eggshells are emptied and sanitized, and then filled with a special blend of milk and dark chocolate with hazelnuts. How can eggs be shipped safely across the world?

Fortunately, we have a very special system for shipping. As you can see from the picture of the party eggs above, World's Sweetest Fun has special packaging for the wonderful eggs. Then we cradle them in specially-made padded boxes.

Your eggs will come to you in perfect condition.

Is Chocolate Sexy?

Neurologist David Lewis hooked college students up with electrodes and heart monitors and fed them dark chocolate, measuring how stimulating the chocolate was to the brains and hearts of the subjects.

Then the same measurements were taken during passionate kisses.

The results? Both heart rates and brain waves showed more excitement and longer-lasting excitement from chocolate than from kissing. Heart rates more than doubled in some chocolate-eating volunteers, and both heart rate and increased brain activity went back down more quickly after the kiss than after the chocolate.

While many question the accuracy of the study, chocolate does contain phenylethylamine, a compound the body makes on its own when people are in love, as well as theobromine, a stimulating substance rivaling caffeine.

Apparently, love rocks, but chocolate rocks harder.

Have you thought much about eggs?

Cocoa Beans as Currency

Columbus was the first European to report that cocoa beans were used as currency in the New World. He saw this in what is now Nicaragua in the early 1500s, but he didn't invest in cocoa. He apparently had other things on his mind at the time. Possibly the deliciousness of chocolate.

In Aztec culture, 400 cocoa beans equaled one zontli, and 20 zontli or 8000 beans made up one Xiquipilli, so the conversion rate might have been difficult for Europeans to express. Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez wrote about the purchases he made with cocoa beans, though -- one rabbit could be had for four beans.

Hernando Cortez didn't care for chocolate, so he wasn't distracted from its value as currency. Having received a cocoa plantation as a gift from Montezuma, he set about making cocoa beans profitable for Spain.

Jesuit Pedro Martyre de Angleria admired the use of cocoa beans for currency, on the grounds that it discouraged avarice. Cocoa beans wouldn't keep their usefulness if they were kept out of circulation for long, so there was no point in hoarding them.

Cocoa beans didn't catch on as currency in other parts of the world, but they have kept their value as the source of chocolate. There's no point in hoarding chocolate, either, but it makes a great choice for fundraising.