Simply Recipes has an authoritative round-up on Super Bowl recipes featuring everything from classics (potato skins, hot wings, various and sundry dips) to the truly frightening. Okay, so I was honestly curious about the Beer Cheese Cupcakes with Bacon Cheddar Frosting — if that’s not a manly dessert, what is? — but then I saw the “beer” in question: Budweiser Select. What’s a sell-respecting beer drinking to do? Guiness cupcakes, of course.

Hot on the heels of this research, an editorial in The Lancet points out that some of the most delicious “dark” chocolates have had all of the good stuff (flavanols) removed and are instead just loaded with delicious sugar and fat. Both of which will cause your heart to seize like the 1.5L engine in a ‘85 blue Honda Civic run for 600 miles without any oil… While there’s no good, consistent way to tell if the heart healthy goods have been removed, chances are that if the words “milk” or “sweetened” appear anywhere on the packaging you might as well just inject a syringe full of beef fat right into your heart. On the bright side, if you do have a weakness for truly dark chocolate you can eat it knowing only the fat content is causing the hardening of your arteries and that the flavanols are doing there best to keep you alive.

“Badaró then removed his clothes. He landed with an awkward splash. Three of us were in a trough that might comfortable accommodate an adult pig, and the fermenting cacao was up to our necks. Badaró had taken to invoking some god, humming in his deep voice. “We must immerse ourselves and connect to the Aztec gods,” he said. He disappeared, sinking below the surface.

Unfortunately for the eager reader, Extreme Chocolate: the quest for the perfect bean, from the October 29th magazine is not available online; and those unable to find this work of gonzo gastronomy in print must content themselves with NPR’s interview with Buford and a few pictures.

The researchers seem to think that people saw these useless, discarded cacao seeds, roasted them and then made a horrible bitter drink that then took off and has become the fantabulous variety of chocolates we have today—which seems reasonable enough. The end of the article is a little bizarre with a random chef discussing how this research could:

… fuel creativity and spark the imagination of chocolatiers and chefs. … As a result, we get new ideas about using chocolate in savory as well as sweet dishes and about pairing the flavors of chocolate with other flavors, too.

I really don’t see how the discovery that chocolate was found earlier than previously thought will change the way we experiment with chocolate. I suppose it would be interesting to see someone do something like oh, say, a savory sauce made with chocolate and peppers. What I want to know is what this fermented cacao fruit drink tastes like.