love cooking by choosing chocolate

I love cooking. It is no secret.

As well as my love for cooking, I also love growing and making things. 

Hence I am always impressed when I meet someone like-minded.

We are talking chocolate in this case

Not melting and shaping chocolate.

The real stuff, from bean to bar.

Now that I have your attention …

Making chocolate is a true labour of love

It starts by sorting the fermented cocoa beans to remove any defective or damaged beans.

Then roasting the beans to a particular roasting profile for that specific bean.

After that crushing the beans and winnowing them to extract the husk.

You then use a wet grinder to conch the cocoa nibs for between 9 to 12 hours.

The result is refined cocoa mass

If you add cocoa butter, sugar, and flavouring to the cocoa mass, you have chocolate.

The refined cocoa mass can also be pressed at around 30 tonnes.

This uses a special press to separate the cocoa butter from the cocoa mass, resulting in cocoa butter and cocoa powder.

Once the chocolate has been refined, it goes through a tempering stage.

This gives the chocolate its gloss and snappiness.

The process is very time consuming

It also requires special care and attention throughout.

It was a priviledge to see how the chocolate process works.

I also met the man who made the machines himself to do all of this.

Plus I got to help make and test a batch of chilli chocolate

You might say “Yeah, chocolate will do that.”

Partly, sure.

Actually I was more impressed with the machines.

How they were used to bring the chocolate up to the right temperature.

Then tempered so the right chemical balance can be achieved.

A true love cooking and taste experience

The chocolate had not set properly when we left.

I did manage to taste it and the chilli hit at the end was well worth it.

I cannot wait to hear what other people think.

Also having a go at making some more taste flavours in the future.

In the meantime, I have been making this yummy chocolate banana bread.

You can see the demonstration here

Try this chocolate banana bread recipe from M’s Kitchen if you enjoy a little love cooking with chocolate. 

Love always,

M.