DATE: Monday, November 10, 1997             TAG: 9711080283

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CAROL HORTON, PLOT ONLINE 

                                            LENGTH:   67 lines

CHOLOLATE: FINDING THE 5TH FOOD GROUP RIGHT ONLINE

There are two kinds of people in the world: chocoholics and aliens. And since aliens already know everything there is to know about Web sites (they invented the Internet, you know, as part of their plan to take over the universe), here are some tidbits about researching the fifth food group online.

Start your day with a chocolate glazed and a click on www.PilotOnline.com, go to the business section, find this column and follow along.

The Chocoholics Survival Guide is your lifeline to the cocoa-crazed world. This site includes dozens of links to all that is chocolate; retailers, recipes, the big chocolate companies and the home-grown chocolate sites.

Chocoholics.com also has the gamut of links from retail to trivia, but adds a special occasion reminder service to help you stay out of the doghouse. Fill out a form that includes names, dates, birthdays and anniversaries, and they'll e-mail you (for free) two weeks prior to the big day to remind you to send the chocoholic on your list a sweet little something from one of their confectioner advertisers.

There's also a link to fun and facts, where you can learn that Napoleon always carried chocolate with him for quick energy, that dietetic chocolate often has more calories than regular and that (surprise!) the Swiss consume more chocolate per capita annually than any other country.

It's tough to go online with a chocolate mission and not be tempted to buy something. The Chocolate Lover's Page is largely a retail-oriented site, but has lots of links to help you get your holiday shopping off the ground.

One of the best non-commercial Web sites is Empty's Chocolate Page. Like a connoisseur reviews and describes wines, Empty's critiques chocolates. There are in-depth descriptions of the history of chocolate and the chocolate-making process.

Of course, links to other sites are also included, namely the author's favorite company, Green and Black, a British candymaker that boasts organically produced chocolate. There you can find Linda McCartney's brownie recipe.

Of course, all the major manufacturers have their own Web sites, too. Godiva has teamed up with Chocolatier magazine to produce a site of hundreds of chocolate recipes.

The names alone are enough to inspire you to spend the day in the kitchen: Bailey's frozen chocolate chunk mousse cake, cappuccino brownies with white chocolate sauce and chocolate espresso fudge cake, to name a few. You're not going to find that 10-minute recipe here for the cupcakes you committed to for the Cub Scout meeting, but you will find a showstopper they'll be talking about for many desserts to come.

For an entertaining Web site the kids (and you) will really take a shine to, try the M&M's page. This is a virtual studio tour of the place where M&M's allegedly live, work and play, and is quite Disneyesque. For a unique gift idea, here you can actually mix your own color of M&M's online, and then of course, buy them. The only hitch, the smallest quantity they can mix of your custom color is 40 pounds for $195 plus $25 shipping and handling. A little extravagant for a mid-afternoon snack perhaps, but could make for great party favors at a wedding.

As expected, the great American chocolate bar has a slick site. The Hershey Co. is into a lot more than just chocolate, and it's all represented here on this site. From the Hershey Food Co. International to tourism in Hershey, Pa. - they've got a link. And the chocolate content on the site is rich in information, too. There's some interesting Q&As about common chocolate concerns regarding saturated fat, caffeine and hyperactivity. Not surprisingly, Hershey says none of these things is a problem where chocolate's concerned.

A list of new products is high on the site's priorities, including miniature Hershey Kisses for baking.

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