Cocoa in the Raw
Today is national chocolate day in the U.S. so it seemed like a good time to talk about my experiences learning about and making chocolate here in Ecuador. Ecuador is the #7 producer of cocoa in the world, but its industry is one of the oldest. The cocoa plant originated in the Americas, and archeologist have found traces of cocoa in 5,000 year old pottery here in Ecuador!
Cocoa pods are full of seeds which are covered in a sweet fruit. These can be eaten raw and are pretty tasty themselves, but in order to render the best chocolates the seeds should be fermented whole.
The seeds are then dried for several days until you get a product ready to be turned into chocolate.
This photo show seeds in different stages of the drying phase.
Picking Out the Good Pieces
After the seeds are dried, it’s time to make the chocolate.
The first step is to pick out all the broken, underripe, and small pieces.
Sub-par pieces can burn during the toasting process and leave the chocolate with a bitter taste.
Toasting
Next we toast the cocoa on a medium-high heat with constant stirring. We want all the pieces to cook evenly but not burn.
Once you start to smell the aroma of chocolate you can give it a try. If it isn’t ready then it will be bitter.
Keep in mind that this is before adding sugar so don’t expect it to taste just like chocolate. Think more the raw cocoa powder you add to make chocolate milk.
Prepping for Grinding
Once the seeds are ready they need to cool for minute, and then they can be peeled.
They may be brittle at this point. It’s not a big deal if you break some, they’re all getting ground up anyway, but it can make a mess and you don’t want to waste any of that precious cocoa.
It was kind of a fun challenge to see who could get through the most without breaking any. I lost.
Grinding
We ground ours with a hand grinder.
It needs to go through the grinder at least 3 times when you do it this way, but the more you do it the more consistent the texture will be.
It’s also a great arm workout.
Mixing
Then we mix it with the sugar.
I’ve found that my favorite is a 70/30 cocoa/sugar mixture, but people’s taste vary.
You can also mix in nuts, ginger, orange zest, spices, or whatever else you think will be good with your chocolate.
Chocolate covered coffee beans are one of my favorites.
Molding
You then place the chocolate in whatever mold you have, and let them cool until hard.
It can just be a plastic bowl or whatever. We had these cute flowers molds.
After they harden you pop them out on a clean surface and admire your work for a bit.
Eating!
Ok, now it’s ready to eat.
We enjoyed ours with some hot chocolate made from the leftovers.
And that was the day I learned you can have too much of a good thing.