Ecuador: How to make chocolate from seed to bar by hand

High in the clouds forest below Quito there is a place where chocolate is still made by hand (almost). Here the chocolate is a pure form that pre-dates Rudlophe Lindt’s addition of cacao butter to Henri Nestlé and Daniel Peter’s milk chocolate drink to make bars.

In this photo you see an empty pod, bowl of seed, processed seeds, and final product. Now I’ll show you how it’s done.

This series of compartments are where the cacao juice is drained from the seeds.  Over three days the seeds are moved from top to bottom as less and less juice comes out. The juice was traditionally thrown away but these guys founds a new use for it which I will get to in the “tasting” section.

These are the drying racks. This rack is full of wet seeds.

This rack has nearly dried seeds.  Here in the cloud forest seeds take 7-21 days to dry enough for grinding.

The seed on the left is not dry enough as seen by its more purple coloring.  On the right the seed is ready for the next step.

Here the seeds are roasted…

ground…

and sorted.

Cacoa butter is removed and the powder is ground with varying levels of sugar. This room is kept at 120F.

The percentage of powder to sugar, of course, is the the percent cacao on the label.

In the cold room the chocolate is put into molds and allowed to cool at a controlled temperature  for proper hardening.

This is pure cacao measured for baking brownies.

Here is the recipe. In the coming weeks I will post a bit about tasting this chocolate.

Enjoy!

Here are some of my food articles:

Comida típica (typical food):Ecuador and Cuy (guinea pig)

Comida típica (typical food): Colombia

The Interior of Alaskan Life 2: Preparing Thanksgiving Moose Ribs

Here are some of my travel related articles about Ecuador:

Ecuador: Las Cajas National Park

Ecuador:Bird watching in Mindo

Swimming with sea lions

Galápagos Islands: Walking amongst giants with the Galápagos land tortoise

Checklist for travel to the Galápagos Islands

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“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover …”

-Mark Twain