Chocolate Covered Anything Day

What the day is

Chocolate Covered Anything Day is observed on December 16. The premise is that chocolate improves whatever it is applied to, and there is a physical reason it works as a coating at all.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented.

Cocoa butter has a property shared by very few edible fats. It is firm and brittle at room temperature and melts just below body temperature, over a narrow range. That is why a chocolate shell snaps cleanly when bitten and then disappears in the mouth rather than turning greasy. Almost any other fat is either soft at room temperature or still waxy at body heat.

The complication is that cocoa butter can crystallize into several different forms, and only one of them behaves properly. Chocolate that has been melted and simply allowed to cool sets into a mixture of unstable crystal types: dull, soft, streaky, and inclined to smear. Tempering is the controlled heating and cooling that seeds the stable form throughout, and it is what produces gloss, snap and a coating that keeps at room temperature.

The whitish film that appears on old chocolate is bloom, and there are two kinds. Fat bloom happens when unstable crystals reorganize and fat migrates to the surface, usually after warmth. Sugar bloom happens when moisture dissolves surface sugar and leaves it behind as it evaporates, usually after refrigeration. Neither is mold and neither is harmful.

Water is the one real enemy. A few drops stirred into melted chocolate will seize it into a stiff grainy paste almost instantly, which is why anything being dipped has to be genuinely dry first.

How to take part

• Dry everything thoroughly before dipping, particularly fruit.
• Temper the chocolate if you want snap and shine, or use coating chocolate if you would rather not.
• Melt gently and never let steam or water near the bowl.
• Dip something savory. Pretzels and potato chips are the classics for good reason.
• Store the results somewhere cool but not in the fridge, which invites sugar bloom.