Bonanza!

Today a group of us at school decided to make chocolate the old-fashioned way. We began with dried caoco beans. First we roasted them over an open flame in earthenware pots, periodically stirring them with gigantic wooden paddles. After the beans are hot, they can be peeled. It was wonderful to sit for hours with my compeñeras and our maestras, shooting the breeze in Spanish, cracking and shelling the beans into big bowls in our laps. The shells are dry and crackly and they flake off to reveal a rich, oily bean. The smell is superb, and it permeates everything.

After all the beans were shelled, they were ready to be ground. So we took all of the beans to a house with a mill that the maestras knew of. The mill was like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a handmade contraption, situated in someone’s living room, which consisted of all sorts used of belts, gears and grinders. When it whirred into motion, with much clacking and clanking, it ground all of our beans into sand sized granules. We mixed one part beans with another part sugar, and sent it through the machine twice more.

When we were finished, we had a fine brown powder, almost akin to chocolate flour. We wrapped it in plastic carried it back to school in plastic tubs. In the kitchen, we packed the chocolate powder into bar shapes. Then, we pounded the bars with our hands, trying to break down all of the crystallized sugar. The idea is to pummel the chocolate until all the oil rises to the surface and it has a shiny sheen. After nearly three hours of work, we finally had chocolate! Needless to say, the results are all the sweeter when you’ve made them yourself.