My Chocolate Top Hit. Número 2: Ritter Sport. Square and German.

One more beautyfull chocolate, my favorite, very colorful and tasty. Ritter Sport. 

Always asked parents to bring it to us from trip to Germany!  My favorite is hazelnuts and marcipan . Company celebrate 102 years this 2014 ! Congratulations!

1912. Everything started when ...

... Alfred Eugen and Clara Ritter founded the chocolate and confectionary factory “Alfred Ritter Canstatt” in Stuttgart. There the first “Ritter”-chocolates were produced and sold. Clara Ritter’s proposal, ...

... to produce a square chocolate bar quickly meets with agreement in the family. Her argument: “We’ll make a chocolate that fits into the pocket of every sports jacket, doesn’t break, and still weighs the same as a normal long bar of chocolate.” The chocolate square is named “Ritter’s Sport Chocolate”. 

A revolution in ...

... the chocolate market: Entrepreneur Alfred Otto Ritter makes the courageous decision to introduce a “colourful palette”. Each variety is assigned a cheerful colour to characterise it. Another building block of the brand is created.

My Chocolate Top Hit: número 3. Fazer, chocolate from Finland.

Fazer roots in Finland

Karl Fazer was born in Helsinki in 1866 and discovered his love of creating taste sensations from a very early age. His parents, Dorothea and Eduard Fazer, had moved to Finland from Switzerland and started a family fur business before he was born.

Instead of joining the family business, Karl Fazer decided to become a confectioner against his father’s wishes. He studied baking in Berlin, Paris and Saint Petersburg before opening a French-Russian confectionery café at Kluuvikatu 3 in Helsinki on 17 September 1891.

Nature was always close to Karl Fazer’s heart and he fell in love with the Finnish countryside and all that it had to offer. When he was younger he enjoyed spending his time wandering the woods and he was destined to become a forester before training to be a confectioner.

The public’s appetite for Fazer delicacies continued to grow as well as Fazer’s assortment. In September 1897 Fazer celebrated the opening of the company's new four-floor factory at Tehtaankatu in central Helsinki.

Following a number of successful years producing confectionary on Tehtaankatu Street, the factory became too cramped and the company had outgrown it. Karl Fazer’s son Sven Fazer dreamt of building a completely new and modern factory outside of the city.

In 1963 Fazer opened a revolutionary new factory in the woods of neighbouring Vantaa, which offered natural water resources, beautiful surroundings and an opportunity to grow the business.

Today, all Fazer’s confectionary products are made in Finland and there are factories dotted around the country with chocolate production in Vantaa, sugar confectionery in Lappeenranta, and gum and pastilles in Karkkila.

My chocolate top hit. Número 4. Ferrero Rocher.

One of my other favorite chocolate is Ferrero Rocher. Every time a have chocolate craving , I would buy Golden round treasures. Every bites gives you big pleasure, take you back in memories of the book "Charlie and Chocolate Factory". Ferrero Rocher is a spherical chocolate sweet made by Italian chocolatier Ferrero SpA. Introduced in 1982, the chocolates consist of a whole roasted hazelnut encased in a thin wafer shell filled with hazelnut cream including vegetable oil and covered in milk chocolate and chopped hazelnuts.The sweets each contain 73 calories, and are individually packaged inside a gold-coloured wrapper. Rocher comes from French and means "rock". History of this chocolates starts earlier when Italian boy had a dream. He loved sweets and when he grow up he continued believe that one day it will come true. 

In the 1940's Pietro Ferrero had a dream. The gifted Italian confectioner wanted to bring fine chocolates to the world. First, though, he needed to change the way his countrymen bought chocolates. In 1946, Pietro began to do just that. At the time, confections, cake and pastries were reserved only for special occasions, and even then Italian consumers chose products from small manufacturers and local pastry shops. Pietro's vision went far beyond these confines. He wanted to create original premium candies and make them widely available at affordable prices.

Till now company creates different taste of chocolate, but my favorite always remains original golden Ferrero Rocher.

My Chocolate Top Hit: número 5 - Reber.

        

       Who doesn't like chocolate? Everybody does! I'm big fun, so I decided to make my top hit of favorites chocolate . The origins of the word "chocolate" probably comes from the Classical Nahuatl wordxocolātl (meaning "bitter water"), and entered the English language from Spanish.

How the word "chocolate" came into Spanish is not certain. Perhaps the most cited explanation is that "chocolate" comes fromNahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, from the word "chocolatl", which many sources derived from the Nahuatl word "xocolatl" (pronounced [ ʃoˈkolaːtɬ]) made up from the words "xococ" meaning "sour" or "bitter",and "atl" meaning "water" or "drink".

However, as William Bright noted,the word "chocolatl" doesn't occur in central Mexican colonial sources, making this an unlikely derivation. Santamaria gives a derivation from the Yucatec Maya word "chokol" meaning "hot", and the Nahuatl "atl" meaning "water". More recently Dakin and Wichman derive it from another Nahuatl term, "chicolatl" from Eastern Nahuatl meaning "beaten drink".

So here is number 5. Reber.

The  Reber Success story began in 1865, when Peter Reber opened Chocolate cafe in Munich.

This wonderful world of sweet treats soon became a popular meeting place for the who’s who of Munich.Life was good for the ladies and gentlemen of the upper classes, who enjoyed homemade cakes and a “Schalerl” of coffee.

In 1938, the family moved their headquarters – Café Reber – to downtown Bad Reichenhall in Bavaria, Germany. Here also, within a very short period of time, the Café evolved into a meeting place – for the lovers of a little special indulgence.

It has been over 145 years since the first Reber Café was opened and during that time the company, which is still owned and operated by the family today, has made a name for itself among confectionary gourmets – and not only because of its small delicious treat named the Genuine Reber Mozart-Kugeln.