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It began with my mother sending me an email with a
video on how chocolate is made. I watched the video, I
did some more research and here is what I learned.
1. History of Chocolate
Cocoa beans were first found in central America 5,000
years ago. It is believed that the Olmecs from Mexico
were the first to use cocoa. They used it to make a hot
and spicy drink, which is quite similar to what we call
hot chocolate.
Then the Olmecs passed chocolate on to the central
Americans called the Mayans. The Mayans not only
drank the spicy drink of the Olmecs, but also consumed
it during religious ceremonies and before making large
financial transactions.
Chocolate was very important to the Mayans, yet it was
available to the rich and poor alike.
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Once the Aztecs took over Mexico, they started using
chocolate as currency, and they considered it more
precious than gold. They believed it was a gift
While the Aztecs continued to rule, Christopher
Columbus crashed into one of their ships which were
full of cocoa beans, and he brought them home to Spain.
Once chocolate reached Spain, the Spanish started
making what we call hot chocolate
In the 1500’s other European countries such as France
started exploring central America and also discovered
cocoa beans. Soon, chocolate had reached all of Europe.
In Europe, chocolate was only for the rich and wealthy.
In 1828 a new way to use cocoa beans came up. A
Dutch chemist named Coenraad Johannes van Houten
found that if chocolate was mixed with some alkaline
salts and then powdered it would be easier to mix with
water. The Europeans called this ‘Dutch Cocoa’. And
this is how cocoa powder was invented.
After Dutch cocoa, chocolate was made much cheeper
and available to most of the public.
Chocolate first came to the thirteen colonies in America
when a Spanish trade-ship came to Florida in 1641.
Soon after that, in 1682, the first chocolate house was
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opened there. By 1773 chocolate was a common dish in
all of North America.
In 1876, a chocolatier named Daniel Peter added dried
milk powder to chocolate making milk chocolate. After
a little help from a friend Hennri Nestle he got milk
chocolate into the market. But Daniel’s milk chocolate
was very hard and would not easily melt. So in year
1879 chocolatier Rudolf Lindt managed to make
chocolate with the melt-in-your-mouth texture.
2. Growing and Fermenting Cocoa in Current
Times
1. Growing
Cocoa cannot grow in farms. It needs the rain-forest
climate and trees to be able to grow properly. This is
because the pollinators of the cocoa flower are dust-
speck size midges that only live in rain-forests. Cocoa
flowers can only be pollinated during the day.
The midges aren’t very good at pollinating the cocoa
flowers, and total successfully pollinated blossoms are
less than one in twenty. To increase the number of
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pollinated flowers, farmers use minuscule paintbrushes
to pollinate them.
2. Fermenting
The fruits of the successfully pollinated flowers are
opened and the beans are collected. They are wrapped in
banana leaves, and kept in boxes. It needs to be dark in
the boxes, so that the bacteria and fungi can thrive.
First in the process, yeast fungi start eating away at the
beans. As they do this, the ethanol level rises, until all
the bacteria and fungi die out. Only Lactobacillus and
Azotobacter which are two types of bacteria, thrive in
the new environment. The cocoa is left for 6 days to
ferment.
If chocolate is with from under-fermented beans, then it
will look gray and taste sour.
3. Making Chocolate
Chocolate is made at a chocolate factory.
To start the process, the good beans are separated from
the stems, broken or open beans. The good beans are
taken and roasted for 20mis at 250o. This process kills
the bacteria in the beans and makes them easier to
break. Once they are roasted, the beans are broken. The
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shells are thrown away and the nibs are removed. The
nibs are put into a machine that separates the cocoa
butter from the cocoa solids.
To make dark chocolate and milk chocolate the cocoa
solids and a few other ingredients are put together. The
difference between dark and milk chocolate is that milk
chocolate has more sugar and milk than dark chocolate.
But white chocolate is completely different. It is made
with the cocoa butter, milk and sugar but not the cocoa
solids.
4. Fun Facts About Chocolate
The biggest chocolate in the world weighed about
12,000pounds.
Chocolate is made in over 600 different favors It
takes 400 beans to make 1pound of chocolate. It
took 8 years to come up with a recipe for
chocolate.
Dark chocolate contains heart healthy antioxidants.
There is a type of cocoa bean which is red in color
and tastes like wild berries. It is used to make a
type of chocolate called ruby chocolate.
