How easily it seduces. How readily we succumb. A glimpse, a sniff, a flash of pleasures past, and all resistance melts — we reach for another chocolate. Dark or light, solid or brimming with fruits, creams, caramel, nuts or liqueurs, chocolate caresses the taste buds with its ambrosial flavors, and we surrender to pure joy. It's no surprise that chocolate's scientific name, Theobroma cacao, means food of the gods.

Chocolate's roots are in the cacao tree. And the roots of the cocoa (also "cacao") tree cultivation are in Central America, specifically with the Mayans and Aztecs. They valued the beans of the tree so highly that the beans were used as currency when they were not being made into a drink, which the Aztecs called xocoatl (xoco means better, and atl means water). Montezuma, the Aztec leader, drank xocoatl from golden goblets that he then threw into the lake. And before the Aztecs performed a human sacrifice, they gave the victim a last taste of xocoatl.

In the sixteenth century, Hernan Cortes (the Spanish conqueror of Mexico) brought the beans back to Spain; by the seventeenth century, chocolate had become the fashionable drink of Europe's wealthy. Maria Theresa, who married Louis XIV in 1660, had one servant whose sole function was to prepare her favorite chocolate drink. The English diarist Samuel Pepys, having spent the day and night celebrating the crowning of Charles II, headed to his favorite chocolate house, where the proprietor "did give me a chocolate to settle my stomach." As more cacao beans were imported, taxes, and then prices, fell until chocolate was no longer limited to the upper class. By the mid-1800s, the first chocolate bar was made. Ever since, chocolate has found a thousand ways to tempt and tantalize. (Note: Only a thousand? *grins*)

To make chocolate, the beans of the cocoa tree are roasted, shelled, ground and heated until they become a thick, dark liquid called "chocolate liquor" (despite its name, it is nonalcoholic). This, the base of all chocolate, is also separated into cocoa butter and cocoa powder. The fat-free powder makes cocoa.

Dark chocolate is chocolate liquor combined with cocoa butter, vanilla, lecithin (as an emulsifier) and varying amounts of sugar. Milk chocolate is a combination of the same ingredients in different proportions, plus powdered milk solids. White chocolate, a blend of cocoa butter, sugar, vanilla, milk solids and lecithin, is not really considered chocolate because it contains no chocolate liquor. Two additional definitions are couverture (covering, in French), which is a chocolate made with a high percentage of additional cocoa butter and used primarily to form a thin, smooth, shiny coating on dipped candies; and ganache, a velvety blend of chocolate and cream, often with butter added, that is usually dipped in chocolate and occasionally rolled in cocoa powder and sugar to make a basic truffle.

The truffle is a small, rich chocolate, usually with a pure ganache center or ganache blended with fruits, liqueurs or nuts. A praline is a chocolate with a filling of finely ground, caramelized hazelnuts or almonds. And a bonbon is a chocolate filled with fondant, a creamy confection made in many different flavors.