How to Make Chocolate
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| By
Brenda H. Murphy |
| This is quite likely
the dream project of many children, as well as a few of
their mothers! But be warned, making chocolate is a finicky
business, and you won't be turning out huge bars of Toblerone.
In fact, it might be a good idea to purchase some inexpensive
molds for small, flat decorative chocolate shapes like flowers,
animals, and birds. These aren't too hard to find, and are
usually available around Easter and Valentine's. |
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| The chocolate you
make will be pure chocolate, not the chocolates you get
in a gift box. That takes even more time and patience than
either Mom or the kids may have. Start your project with
raw cocoa beans, which can be found through many online
sites. |
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| Beans need to be
roasted by spreading them in a single layer on a pan, and
leaving them in the oven for approximately 30 minutes at
400F degrees. Allow them to cool, and then peel off the
husks, which is a really fiddly job. |
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| Next, you'll want
to break them up. Spreading them out on a tea towel, placing
another over top and using a hammer will work, but possibly
too well. A more restrained and easy to control way of breaking
them into pieces is with a mortar and pestle. Once you have
pieces, put them in a clean pepper or other mill and grind
them. Be careful though, because as the bits get smaller,
they tend to liquefy. Grind just to the point where you
can put them back in a dish and use the mortar and pestle
again for the final mashing. |
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| By now you have a
mush. Heat the dish in a pan of water, and then grind a
little more in the mortar. It should have reached a fairly
smooth consistency after this stage. Now you can add a drop
of mint flavoring, and your sugar. A rule of thumb is 1/2
cup sugar per pound of cocoa beans processed, but you may
want to start out with less, in order to see how sweet it
gets. Pour into molds, and you have pure chocolate! |
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