National Cream-Filled Chocolates Day

February 14th is National Cream-Filled Chocolates Day in the United States.

February 14th is also St Valentine's Day, so it's only appropriate that today be a day that celebrates a type of chocolate.

The rather vague name of cream-filled chocolate covers a wide variety of, usually fairly similar, individual chocolates that can be found in assortment boxes of the type that are common today.

These are an inner cream centre with an outer chocolate covering. The chocolate can be of any type - milk, bittersweet or white - and so can the centre. The cream, or fondant, filling can be flavoured in many different ways. Fruit flavourings, such as orange and strawberry, are popular, but there are other types.

It can also be taken rather more literally, as a chocolate filled with cream, but this is much rarer, and would be more fragile and much quicker to go off, the type of chocolate that would need eating fresh or keeping refrigerated.

National Chocolates Day

November 29th is National Chocolates Day in the United States.

This day is a celebration of chocolate in its oh so many different forms. There are, in fact, so many different types of chocolate that it's hard to pick where to begin.

The most basic forms are, of course, the simple chocolate bars. These can come in white, milk or dark (also called bittersweet) chocolate. These are broad categories, and the actual names, as well as what makes a chocolate fall into a particular category, vary in different regions and countries. The simple chocolate bar can then have things added to it, nuts being a popular addition.

Spreading out from the chocolate bar includes anything that contains chocolate. This includes sweets, or candies, biscuits, or cookies, and desserts and cakes. It can also include chocolate based drinks.

Although chocolate is often considered to be a sweet food, there are many savoury dishes that include it, and it was, in fact, originally used in savoury foods.