1. Chocolate Covered Cherry Hearts with a port cherry juice reduction
2. Chocolate Heart with a BeeBread filling (Honey and Pollen)
3. Hand Dipped Date stuffed with peanut butter and crystallized ginger
4. Chocolate Pyramids filled with Rosemary infused Honey
1. Gran Marnier Ganache White Chocolate Cups with Candied Orange Peel
2. Maple Ghee Caramel White Chocolate Domes
3. White Chocolate Covered Cherry Hearts with a port cherry juice reduction
4. Strawberry Jam filled White Chocolate Squares
5. Espresso bean filled White Chocolate
White Chocolate does not contain much of the "superfood" aspect and wonderful phytonutrients of the cacao solids. White chocolate only has the cacao butter but none of the dark goodness that makes chocolate so healthy. White Chocolate; however, is instrumental to the mystery and magic of chocolate as cacao butter has a very synchronistic relationship to humans by melting just below body temperature.
SUPERFOOD
1200 individual constituents. This complexity is part of why it has not successfully been artificially synthesized in a lab. The cacao butter also has very complex crystallization pattern.
Major impacts on Humans
- Antioxidants
- Anandamide
- Theobromine
- Magnesium
- Phenylethylamine
Antioxidants
- ORAC dark chocolate 18,000, Berries rich in antioxidants 3-7000
- And cocoa powder has 80,000
- Antioxidant polyphenols — protective of heart and circulatory system
- Part of the Raw chocolate movement contends that these antioxidants are significantly decreased in the fermentation/roasting phase.
Anandamide
- Anandamide receptors are filled by
- Endongenous cannabinoids (which break down quickly)
- TCH (primary psychoactive substance in marijuana)
- Chocolate
- Runner's High
- Impacts : mood, memory, appetite and pain perception
- Anandamide inhibitors. Chocolate, in it’s deep mystery also contains inhibitors that stop our body from clearing the anadamide from it's receptors. So after you go for a run, eat some chocolate to prolong that high.
Theobromine (and caffeine)
- Theobromine has direct impact on cardiovascular system
- It gently stimulates the central nervous system, dilates blood vessels and relaxes smooth muscles.
- An alkaloid similar to caffeine though only found in 19 species (such as coffee, tea, yerba mate, and some relatives of chocolate.)
- (Caffeine — 50 gram bar of dark chocolate has between 10 and 60 mg of caffeine while a cup of coffee has 175 mg)
Magnesium —
- Very high levels of Magnesium.
- The difference between our red blood cell and a chlorophyll molecule is the Fe or Mg core. Magnesium is plant blood.
- Supports heart and brain.
Phenylethylamine (PEA) = “love chemical” , abundant in the brains of happy people, brain releases PEA during sexual arousal and peaks with orgasm.
Cardiovascular Health
- Aztec for chocolate = yollotl eztli — “heart blood”
- Aphrodisiacal
- Dilates blood vessels
- Lowers blood pressure
- Magnesium supports heart health