The Tasting Continues

Today's chocolate line-up included dark chocolates and a mystery chocolate! We tried 62%, 70%, and 82% dark chocolate to see what our preferences were. I thought the 62% was the sweetest and 82% was the most bitter and had the strongest cocoa aftertaste. I preferred the 70% - it was dark but wasn't too bitter. The mystery chocolate was a different story. It tasted spicy and bitter. I did not enjoy the flavor at all and could barely eat it. I then learned that it was banana-cayenne flavored chocolate. I would never have guessed that anyone would put those two flavors together. Some people in the class like it better than I did, but I don't foresee myself buying it ever in the future.

Next up was different types of sweeteners. The dextrose had the most powdery look of the three and was the least sweet. The fructose was extremely sweet. Sucrose, or table sugar, was the middle level of sweet of the three. We then compared different types of honey as sweeteners. The buckwheat honey had a burnt flavor, was the darkest, and had a maple like flavor. It was my least favorite of the four types. The wildflower honey was the sweetest of the four and tasted the most like the honey I had tried before. It was plain and simple honey. The orange blossom honey was a little fruity, sour, and lightest in color. It had kind of a cinnamon flavor to it too. The tupelo honey was my favorite and was good on the bread. It had a hickory flavor and wasn't too sweet.

We also talked about sensation and perception when it comes to eating. People take in experiences bottom-up or top-down. Bottom-up means taking in stimuli and forming your own conclusions about things. Top-down means going into things with bias and experiences that will affect your perceptions. Using the top-down theory explains why we associate memories and things with smell and taste. Expectations can affect what we taste and think about certain foods.