Question: what if Hershey went from using cocoa butters in their chocolate to using vegetable fats and artificial sweeteners?

That's what might happen. They're asking the Food and Drug Administration to change the standards in which chocolate is made and classified, to "modernize" the making of chocolate. Hershey isn't the only company asking the question, it's everyone.

This is sacrilege! We all know that chocolate, even when its high in fat and calories, has a lot of health benefits too. And if people want to have diet chocolate or a chocolate substitute, there are plenty of products already on the market. Changing the taste of Hershey chocolate would be like changing America, damn it!

Check out this site to record your protest.

Godiva has long been a favorite of chocolate-lovers, especially among their core audience of women from 25 to 40, but with the rise of hip new chocolate companies, increasingly off-the-wall flavor combinations and the acceptance of these changes by consumers, the company needed to freshen up their image.

To this end, they are redecorating most of their North American stores and have redesigned their signature gold ballotin, packing it with some brand new, more modern, chocolate combinations.

The box itself is bigger and more luxurious looking, with thick gold paper and a better organization "designed to help customers identify the different...collections." The chocolates themselves have more unusual shapes and are painted with edible, colorful designs, just as many artisan chocolatiers do now. The new flavors include: pecan-caramel duet, a caramel-accented milk chocolate ganache, chocolate with sweet cherry, dark chocolate with raspberry caramel and a macadamia nut mosaic.

By the end of the year, you can expect to see some new things from the company that produces the "curiously strong mints." Altoids are being released in three new chocolate-covered versions: chocolate mint, chocolate ginger and chocolate cinnamon. The three popular Altoids flavors will each be coated in a tin layer of dark chocolate, adding an interesting contrast to the slightly powdery, strongly-flavored candies.

This move should not come as a surprise, since chocolate is a natural pairing with all three flavors - not to mention the fact that many people have already been combining Altoids and chocolate on their own.

If you can't wait a couple of weeks to try them yourself, three tins are up for auction on eBay, one in each flavor. The proceeds of the auction are to be donated to the American Red Cross - which is a nice gesture, considering that the price for the three tins is up to over $180 and there is still a day to go in the auction!

[via Candyaddict]

An elderly Russian woman almost lost a tooth when she bit into her favorite candy bar last week. But it wasn't an errant bit of walnut shell that she found inside the chocolate-coated treat, it was a diamond wedding ring.

At first Elena Otpushchennikova thought she had won a prize from the local candy factory. After finding out that no such contest existed she decided to track down the owner of the gold ring. She quickly concluded that the ring must have slipped off someone's finger while the candy was being made. Rather than publicly announce that she found it she went to the factory to find the owner.

Soon after learning that one of the women there was a newlywed she was giving the ring back to Tatiana. It seems that Tatiana, who'd been married for only two weeks, brought the ring to work to show off to her co-workers. For some reason the whole incident sounds like fodder for a Russian version of I Love Lucy.

Cadbury cream eggs are the favorite chocolates of the Easter season for many. Even with my big sweet tooth, the creamy, ultra-sugary fondant filling is a bit too sweet for me, so I cannot imagine the sugar overload that would follow an attempt to eat the Ultimate Creme Egg. The ultimate creme egg started as 48 individually wrapped Cadbury eggs and a large, hollow milk chocolate eggshell. The fondant fillings were scraped out of the smaller egg and transferred into the large shell, in what must be the coolest Easter egg hack ever.

Santos, at the Scent of Green Bananas, has come up with the perfect way to decorate a chocolate cake for Valentine's Day: more chocolate. This decadent, mini heart-shaped cake is topped with small individual candies, leaving some wrapped to provide a beautiful color contrast. To recreate the Candy Box Cake at home, you can use any chocolate cake recipe - including a box mix - and frost it with chocolate icing. Don't worry if your icing job is not quite perfect, because once the cake is completely frosted, cover the top with your favorite chocolate candies. If a full sized cake is more than you want to bake, you can apply the same candy-decorating technique to frosted cupcakes.