Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, Part Deux, It’s Alive, Bwahahaa!©

 

 

Author’s note -- I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

It’s almost Halloween and you’d better make sure that you have plenty of candy for the trick or treaters.  But you won’t be able to find any Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate bars, because they stopped making them sometime after 1981, because most Americans like sweet chocolate, not dark chocolate, and didn’t like the taste. 

 

But I did, I like dark chocolate, and I remember them fondly.  So, in the spirit of Halloween and like any good Hollywood Mad Scientist, I am going to bring it back to life, bwahahaa!

 

But where to start on my quest to breathe life back into a dead candy bar?  At the beginning of course!

 

The first military chocolate that Hershey’s designed was the 1937 D Ration Bar, which was a 4 ounce, 600 calorie emergency ration bars.  It was roundly disliked, because it was too hard to eat, and because designer Captain Paul P. Logan, wanted it to taste “just a little better than a boiled potato”.  The D Ration Bar was also designed to be able to withstand 120^o F (49^o C) heat for an hour without significant softening.  But most importantly, unlike Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, you can find a recipe for D Ration Bars!

 

So, if we use the D Ration Bar recipe as a framework, or, shall we say, as a skeleton and add in and take out all the changes that Hershey’s made over the years, we should get close to that 120^o F withstanding, sweet treat that I first had in 1978, and remember so well even today.

 

According to U.S. Army in 1944, the D Ration Bar’s ingredients were chocolate liquor, powdered sugar, skim milk powder, cocoa butter, oat flour, and vanillin or ethyl vanilla.

 

According to Hershey’s Archives, in 1943, when the Tropical Chocolate Bar was first introduced, its list of ingredients was identical to that of the D Ration Bar.  That is because it was simply a 1 ounce (28 gram) D Bar!

 

Since the D Bar, was designed to be an emergency ration, the chocolate “is not a sweet”, and wasn’t a sweet chocolate with just 15% cacao, but a bittersweet, chocolate made with a 36% cacao.

 

But in 1957, the basic ingredients were changed, and the oat flour was out, “nonfat milk solids” replaced the “skim milk powder”, and “cocoa powder” replaced the “cocoa butter”.

 

Now nonfat milk solids, are like skim milk powder and cocoa powder is simply the cocoa solids that remain when all the cocoa butter has been pressed out of the cocoa paste.  Since the oat flour has been removed, if exchange it for the same amount of powdered sugar, then, our ingredient list would look like this.

 

A recipe for a 1 ounce (28 gram) 1957 Tropical Chocolate Bar would then be as follows:

·       1-¹/₃ square (10 grams) of Bakers Unsweetened Baking Chocolate

·       4 teaspoons (11 grams) of powdered sugar

·       2 teaspoons (5 grams) of nonfat dry milk powder

·       ¾ teaspoons (2 grams) of cocoa powder

·       A dash of ethyl vanilla

To melt the Bakers Unsweetened Baking Chocolate, use either a microwave or a double-boiler on a stove.

Microwave the chocolate in 30-second intervals, stirring between each, until the chocolate is mostly melted and only a few tiny pieces remain, about 1 1/2 minutes in total.

Mix in the remaining ingredients and press into a mold.

Let cool, remove from the mold and enjoy.

 

Molds can be purchased at Frontline Rations, HERE, or at WWIISoldier.com, HERE.

 

So, now that our Frankenstein recipe is all stitched together, it’s time to give it a jolt and taste test it to see if it is alive!  Bwahahaa!  Come back next week to read “Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, Part Deux, The Taste Test!©”

 

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

Sources

 

 

90th Infantry Division Preservation Group, “Quartermaster Specification - C.Q.D. No. 19 D”, http://www.90thidpg.us/Paperwork/Research/D%20Ration/CQD19D-19420708-Drat.pdf, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Harry; “K-Ration: D-Bar, Sweet Chocolate and the Candy Bar”, https://www.kration.info/d-bar-sweet-chocolateand.html, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Hershey’s Community Archives; “Ration D Bars”, September 7, 2018, https://hersheyarchives.org/encyclopedia/ration-d-bars/#:~:text=The%20first%20of%20the%20Field,Byrd's%20last%20expedition%20in%201939, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Hershey’s Community Archives; “Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar”, September 6, 2018, https://hersheyarchives.org/encyclopedia/hersheys-tropical-chocolate-bar/, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Thatcher, Harold Wesley; The Development of Special Rations for the Army, 1944, pages 4 to 15, https://books.google.com/books?id=l4yMl2-ktH4C&pg=PA13&dq=%22the+formula+for+the+d+ration+as+produced%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj28oeH9KWJAxVNkIkEHW5aGVQQ6AF6BAgFEAI#v=onepage&q=%22the%20formula%20for%20the%20d%20ration%20as%20produced%22&f=false, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Wikimedia, “D ration chocolate bar” U.S. Army Center Of Military History, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D_ration_chocolate_bar.jpg, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Wikimedia, “Maniac1 copy” 1934 film Maniac, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maniac1_copy.jpg, accessed October 20, 2024