When we'd all finished our substantial breakfast we were directed down into the La Casona's cellar basement where we spent the next 45 minutes learning about Cusco's chocolate making secrets. We were shown an DVD about Cusco and then a local chocolate maker (chocolatier) gave an informative power point presentation of the processes involved in the of making chocolate. We learnt that the cacao bean has been cultivated in Latin America for at least three millennia and that this is where the drinking of hot chocolate first began. We also enjoyed the hands on experience of touching samples of raw cocoa beans and samples of the product changes that take place at various stages in the process of chocolate making.
Other facts we learnt were:
That Cusco grows some of the world's finest cacao in the world, in the Chunchada jungle, just beyond Machu Picchu. It's called, cacao chuncho named after the area where it is grown.
I had not realised that chocolate is made from cocoa beans found inside pods which grow from the trunks and branches of the cocoa trees. The pods are larger than an adult's hand and they ripen in a range of colours varying from shades of reds, pinks, greens, yellows or oranges.
Ripe cocoa pods are harvested twice a year. Each Cacao tree produces approximately 30 pods a year. Each pod contains roughly 40 cocoa beans and as it takes about 1000 beans to make. This means that from each tree a kilo of chocolate can be produced.
The chocolate making process begins when the harvested pods are cut open with machetes and the white pulp containing the cocoa beans is scooped out.
Raw cocoa beans have a bitter and undesirable flavour so the beans are simply left out in the heat and moisture to ferment for approximately seven days to ferment. The natural sugars in cocoa beans fuel the fermentation process, which is responsible for much of the classic cocoa flavour. After fermentation, the beans are quickly dried to prevent mould growth.
Next the beans are roasted using the dry roast method, which employs constant stirring to ensure even heating and that the flavours remain pure.
After roasting the beans are crushed to release the internal "nib" from the shells. The cocoa nibs are then ground into a fine powder, which contains cocoa solids and cocoa butter.
Finally it's the combining of cocoa liquor with extra cocoa butter (for smoothness and mouth feel), sugar, milk, and sometimes vanilla, emulsifiers, or stabilizers that produces chocolate as we know it.
However the ratio of sugar and milk to cocoa creates the varying degrees of milk or dark chocolate and the specific ratio in which ingredients are blended creates the unique and signature recipes which, chocolate makers guard closely.
The session ended with each of us tasting samples of chocolate and trying to identify what special ingredients may have been added. The one that tricked many of us was the added ingredient of chilly.
