Though Americans consume a lot of chocolate, not many people are familiar with the process during which cocoa beans become the tasty, creamy treat we all know and love.

Cacao pods are the source of the beans that supply our chocolate, and these are cut from trees using machetes (scary!) or they are shaken from the trees using a stick. Then harvesters remove the beans and their surrounding pulp from the pods, setting the beans aside to ferment and allowing them to develop a chocolatey taste. If the beans are harvested before they've fully ripened, they will have a weak flavor. When the fermentation process is complete, the beans must immediately be dried, usually by allowing them to sit in the sun for 5-7 days. If the beans are not immediately dried, mold can grow, ruining them.

Next stop for the beans is a chocolate factory- while there may not be a chocolate boat ride or oompah loompahs, there are facilities to clean the beans and remove debris, twigs, leaves or stones. The beans are then roasted, graded, and the shells are removed, extracting the nib, which is ground and liquefied into chocolate liquor. From this magical substance comes two important components- cocoa butter and cocoa solids.

The chocolate liquor is combined with cocoa butter in differing ratios to create varying kinds of chocolate- milk, dark, white and other varieties, like the strawberry chocolate we featured this summer. Chocolate is further refined and processed from here, but that varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and based on the quality of the chocolate.

So now you know the basic journey chocolate makes from the tree to your hands- pretty cool, huh?

After we covered the basics of our fair trade and organic chocolate in yesterday's "Ask chocri" post, we got another, similar question from our Facebook friend Bryan, and we thought it warranted its own answer. Bryan asked a question concerning what goes into our chocolate. He wants to know:

"Where does Chocri source its cocoa beans and other ingredients from?"

Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? :) Actually, that's another question without a simple answer. While the short answer is "lots of places," the long answer is "mostly Europe." Our chocolate is from Belgium, and unsurprisingly, a lot of our toppings come from Germany.

Toppings are a bit more broadly sourced, though again mostly European. An example would be our candied lilac and rose petals, which are from a little farm in the Austrian alps. They're real, and created and candied in small batches, by people with giant horns wearing lederhosen. Okay, the last part was hyperbole, but they are really painstakingly handcrafted, just like our blog posts.

Another topping sourced from Germany is mymuesli- if chocri has given you a jones for creating your own food items and you can no longer stand the same cereal everyone and their brother has, you might want to take a look at their 566 quadrillion organic muesli combinations. We've gotten great feedback about this particular topping, and the mymuesli website has some great info not only on their products, but as another example of co-creation. If you're into the idea of making your very own muesli but are in the US, you might want to check out mix my granola. Same idea, but if you enter the code CHOCRI at checkout, you get 15% off!

And lastly, our peanut butter drops are American- has anyone managed to do the humble peanut as much justice as the US? Of course, we can't cover every topping here, but if you have a specific question- tweet us or say hi on Facebook!

At chocri, we get a large assortment of chocolate-related questions. And we happen to love getting them because we really love talking about chocolate. So yesterday, we asked our Twitter friends to ask us anything about chocolate, because we figured we'd hear some interesting questions.

Luckily for me, the first one we got was one I've been itching to debunk. Back when I began working with chocri, Carmen mentioned on the blog that my background is in skincare. And for this question, I get to put my esthetician's hat back on for a minute, because @visudreams asked us:

@chocridotcom Is chocolate really bad for skin, and worsens acne? Some say myth, some say it's true. Awesome business concept btw ;]

Thank you, BTW! :) Back when I worked in spas, I'd get this question all the time. And as a chocolate lover, it made me so sad to see my beloved clients depriving themselves of chocolate unnecessarily. (In fact, we used chocolate topically in several treatments to no ill effect.) Clients would constantly tell me chocolate made them break out so they abstained, or worse, they'd turn down delicious, complimentary dark chocolate while they waited for their appointments. "This tenuous acne/chocolate connection needs to stop!" I would say between mouthfuls of tasty, abstained-from chocolate.

The short answer is NO! Chocolate will not cause you to break out, no matter what your mama told you. (Our theory: the rumor started to keep sugar-craving teens out of the chocolate stash.) As Carmen tweeted yesterday, chocolate is known to be beneficial to skin- eating it regularly can keep skin healthy! A very small number of people could experience a reaction that manifests topically due to sensitivity or allergy to chocolate- but allergies and sensitivities to all types of foods are common. If you're not allergic to chocolate, there's no indication that chocolate causes or worsens acne or breakouts.

So @visudreams and other skincare enthusiasts, don't let a quest for glowing skin keep you from your favorite chocolate treats. In fact, we've got a chocri creation on our chocri creations page that's formulated specifically for beautiful skin.

Also, we're always looking for chocolate-related questions for our "ask chocri" pages- what have you always wanted to know about chocolate? Tweet us at @chocridotcom, or comment on the blog or our Facebook page. We'd be happy to answer!