These days we don’t think twice when we’re eating a piece of delicious chocolate. We take it for granted, just as much as we do with running water and electricity. This delicacy, however, has a really interesting story.

Chocolate was discovered and brought to Europe by the first Spanish settlers in America, who found that the Aztecas enjoyed a drink made from the cacao (cocoa) plant, which was also used by the Mayas before them. They called it xocolatl in their native náhuatl language, which was spelled by approximation as chocolate in Spanish, and that’s why the word is now similar in many languages.

From the beginning of the 16th century, the cocoa plant was shipped over to Spain and quickly adopted by the Spaniards (no surprise there), who mixed it with azúcar de caña (cane sugar). For most of its history, chocolate was consumed as a drink, and to this day chocolate caliente (hot chocolate) is still one of its most common ways of enjoying it in Spain, especially if you have some churros (fried dough) to dip into it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/raes_antics/4109002716/

The rest of Europe didn’t really hear about it for a while, but eventually France and Italy tasted it and fell in love with it too; and frankly, who wouldn’t? Hot chocolate was indeed so popular in Spain that Spaniards didn’t even pay much attention to coffee until much later.

In order to make hot chocolate, the cocoa was mixed with azúcar (sugar), harina (flour) to make it thicken, and other flavourings, such as canela (cinnamon), vainilla (vanilla), and azahar (orange blossom). You can still drink these flavoured hot chocolates in some specialty chocolate shops.

Hard chocolate only became available in Europe in the 19th century, thanks to the industrial revolution and the use of new techniques to process the cocoa. Back in America, hard chocolate had been made manually, but it was a really cumbersome task. This new incarnation allowed chocolate to become popular in other European countries, such as Switzerland, Belgium, and the UK, which soon started their own brands. Today, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t like chocolate.

There are some chocolate museums in Spain where you can see how it was made originally and learn a bit more about the history of this wonderful confectionery. You can see one of them, located on the eastern coast of Spain, in the following link:

http://www.valor.es/museo/museodelchocolate.asp

If you haven’t eaten any chocolate today, treat yourself. It’s really good in moderation!