First Post Over the past few weeks I've begun experimenting with making chocolate. I ordered two pounds of Trinidad San Antonio Cacao beens from Stone and Giacomotto. It took about 2 weeks to receive the beans.

The first night I got them I cracked one open and tried one raw. Yuck... definately not very good and even worse I read later that they can contain all sorts of bacteria and stuff so I won't do that again. I guess this makes since since the beans had been fermenting for a couple days before they were dried out.

The next day I tried roasting about 1/8 lb. using some directions I saw at Chocolate Alchemy. The first batch was probably not big enough because they came out very scorched and I had to throw them away.

I tried again with the same size batch but shorter roasting times and lower temperatures. These came out great so I used this as the template for future baking.

Next came the grinding. I did not know how to go about doing this, so my first attempt was with a morter and pestle. It took a long time to begin to get chocolate, but after a while I was able to begin to liquify the powder. I then added some powdered sugar and it started to taste very good. I had to take a break for dinner, but was able to go back to grinding easily by warming the morter up by the fire.

It did not make much but Lori and I each got a very satisfying spoonful of good dark chocolate. It was a lot of work for that spoonful though.

I went to bed that night thinking of how I could make more with less labor


  ¶ 1:47 PM