Part 2
December 2017
Chocolate making finally began, kind of. We learned all about the history of chocolate and how it used to be made. The first people to use chocolate were the Mayans.
The cacao beans that we used were from the amazon. On the tour of the place there was a reproduction of the cacao tree It had some plastic cacao pods on it was little flowers. Mosquitoes pollinate the flowers on the cacao pod. When the leaves fall off the farmers don't pick them up because the leaves make the soil moist. Then we went over to a counter where we saw some workers popping out milk chocolate bars out of the molds and putting them into box's. After we saw them boxing the chocolates we started making our own chocolates!
First we picked out the molds that we were going to put them in and we got an assortment of different toppings to put with our chocolate. Then the instructor gave us 130 grams of chocolate and we were on our way to making our own chocolate bar! My Mom picked a tiny mold pan so she had to do another mold. My Dad's mold was to big so he asked me to make him some with peanuts from mine. And for me I was just right (You would get that joke if you had read a lot fairy tales when you were little like I did). After we made our chocolates we had to wait 30 minutes for the chocolates to set.
While we were waiting my Mom and I had some lunch. I had a really good caprese sandwich and my Mom had an chicken empanada with homemade coffee flavored hot chocolate. Then we looked in the shop a little bit more closely and found a shirt that said " Save the earth it is the only planet with chocolate" I fell in love with it and I got it. Then I also found a necklace that was made out of real cacao beans with a big nut as the center piece that was from the Amazon. My Dad bought an apron that was like the one that we wore when we took the class. My Dad also got 2 key chains that had a bunch of cacao seeds on them. He plans to turn them into dangling earrings for my Mom, hopefully.
We got cacao nibs, raw cacao beans , roasted cacao beans, and a beautiful terracotta pot to roast cacao beans in. We want to make our own chocolate bars at home. Hopefully we can get the terracotta pot back home without it cracking.
Finally, our chocolates were ready, so we grabbed them and then headed outside to go back to the ship. Our taxi driver, Robert picked us up and we gave him the chocolate bar that we bought for him. My Mom isn't perfect at Spanish and she was trying to tell Robert that the chocolate bar had peppers in it and she accidentally said "I'm a pepper" but Robert still got what my Mom was trying to say, suprisingly. But it was really funny!
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