Chocolate….

I’m working on an article for the Citizen’s Companion on Chocolate in the Nineteenth Century. What a perfect research topic to appease boredom and chocolate cravings (which I get when I am bored and stressed.) The article will look at chocolate as it became more readily available due to several inventions during the industrial revolution. It will also include a variety of chocolate recipies. Here is a recipe for one of my favorite chocolates:

“Chocolate Drops, with Nonpareils. –Have some warm chocolate, as for pistachios; add a little butter or oil to it to make it work more free; make it into balls about the size of a small marble, by rolling a little in the hand, or else put some of the paste on a flat piece of wood, on which you form, and take them off with a knife. Place them on sheets of white paper about an inch apart. When the sheet is covered, take it by the corners and lift it up and down, letting it touch the table each time, which will flatten them. Cover the surface entirely with white nonpareils, and shake off the surplus ones. When the drops are cold they can be taken off the paper easily. The bottom of the drops should be about as broad as a sixpence. Some of them may be left quite plain.” (The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook and Baker)