Discovering fresh organic Cocoa - collecting the beans and preparing them.

I was lucky enough to be given a couple of fresh pods of cocoa recently. Being my first experience of working with the fresh organic material I was of course super excited.

First thing was to spilt open the pod using a machete which is the principal "go-to" tool for many jobs here in the rainforest.
Inside was a little goldmine of fleshy covered seeds - the seeds being the cocoa beans themselves.

So first job was to eat off the delicious outer layer of the seeds as much as possible. The taste was extraordinary. A little comparable to fizzy pineapple in flavour which was surprisingly tasty and refreshing.

Having sucked out all the flavour you are left with a tough outer skin covering the brown cocoa seeds. It is at this point the locals informed me how they leave these out in the sun for a few days to "cure and mature".

So I did as I was told and left them out in the sun for four day. The first two days they got a lot of attention from fruit flies but this receded as the days past.

After four days the skins had dried to the point where it was easy to rub them off and at last there were the brown chocolate beans I had been so excited to see. Looking very chocolate like but at this point not a chocolate aroma as such.

So all that was left to do was roast them and powder them.
Roasting is done in a dry pan shaking them every few minutes to turn and make sure all sides are nicely toasted.

This was the point the kitchen started to fill will the most insane chocolate aroma you can imagine! The enjoyment begins here, even before you get to eat it.

It takes about five to eight minutes to toast them, keep them moving in the pan as you would toasting nuts, so no burning occurs.
Leave to cool completely before crushing to nibs or powder with a pestle and mortar.

They do say homemade is the best and I think when it comes to chocolate it is no exception to that rule.

I hope you get the opportunity to roast some chocolate for yourself one day.

Have a beautiful day.