Makin' 'n tastin' chocolate

Saturday the 23rd, was one of my favorite days of this trip!

We had a resting day after hiking the day before...

and... made our own chocolate.

But most importantly:

ATE the chocolate we had just made!

Here's how it went:

This is the cacao fruit.
You cut it open and take the beans out.
Those beans have to dry/ferment for a couple of days.
This was done for us.

Then, the beans get heated up,
so they burst out of the shell,
or the shell is easy to take off.
Our guide heated up the beans,
while stirring them so they don't burn.

Here you see the beans without shell.
That's when we got to work.
They came off really easy and it was a relaxing job...
The smell at this point was delicious...
You could tell this was going to turn in to chocolate
and we started to get excited!

And then the real fun started!
We pushed the beans through some sort of blender...
and chocolate came out!!!!
A luscious chocolate paste!
Pure!


 

We heated up milk and
brown raw cane sugar (called panela).

Our cacaobean paste went in...

And then, the feast started.
Our guide chopped up fresh fruit for us
(pineapple, banana, strawberry and apple)
and we started to dip, plunge, drop, ...
that already delicious fruit
and made it even more delicious!

No comment...

It was pure enjoyment!