Likely to be launched in time with the British summer (British warmer rainy season), Cadbury’s has announced an awesome invention: chocolate that will be able to withstand 40C temperatures for three hours before melting.

But those on Mud Island will not be able to purchase the chocolate because their country is not hot enough. Only countries that get really hot will be able to purchase the chocolate.

Two Cadbury chocolate engineers from the research and development plant in Bourneville, near Birmingham, have put forward their method for making their breakthrough “heat-tolerant chocolate” in an 8 000-word patent application.

While standard chocolate has a melting point of 33C, the new bars will be better for warmer weather, because nobody likes a melted chocolate bar.

However, the Brits are not happy, and one even has a valid point. Says Angus Kennedy, a chocolate-taster for over 30 years:

What do kids do with chocolates? They put them in their pockets, where they melt and it ends up all over them. I think such a product would be very popular here. There’s no reason why it couldn’t be a seasonal product for the warmer months. We also eat far more chocolate in this country than in most other places. So we should get the benefits when they come up with new innovations.

Professional chocolatiers also seemed relatively unimpressed with the innovation, claiming taste (because of a new method of manufacturing – outlined below) would be altered.

Willie Harcourt-Cooze, chocolate-maker and star of Britain’s Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall documentary “Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory”, said:

There’s no doubt that it will affect the taste. I can’t see why you would develop a product that is less good than the one you already have.

Malachy McReynolds, managing director of Elizabeth Shaw, one of the UK’s biggest and oldest chocolate companies, said the chocolate would lose its melt-in-the-mouth properties:

The melt-in-the-mouth characteristics are precisely what makes chocolate so comforting and delightful to eat. The pleasure of eating it will inevitably be affected. We would not make our chocolate this way.

Kraft Foods’ Mr Bilsborough was forced to agree with this:

The melting point is what makes the bar so attractive, as that is what releases the flavour. If it melts at a higher temperature, it will take longer for it to melt in the mouth.

Says Cadbury, of the new method they’re patenting:

We have found that it is possible to instil temperature-tolerant properties by refining the conched chocolate after the conching step. Production of temperature-tolerant chocolate would allow production of chocolate-containing product more suitable for hot climates, particularly in less economically developed countries where the supply chain is ill-equipped to handle temperature fluctuations.

No word on whether we’ll be getting it here in South Africa.

[Source: Stuff]