CHOCOLATE IS GOOD!!

The Mayans were the first to use coca beans for money, they would use four coca beans to buy a guinea pig and one hundred coca beans to buy a slave. Cacao trees are found in  South America and Africa. The cacao trees grow up to 12 to 15 meters( 36 to 45 feet tall). The fruit looks kind of like a giant avocado, the inside smells like a coconut, they grow on the trunk of there trees and monkeys like to open them up and eat the inside but not the seeds. The Mayans used to make a sacred drink with coca ground up with  human blood. Today my mom, my brother, and I went out because the night before we made reservations for a chocolate making class at the Choco Museo in Cusco.

The way you make the chocolate takes a really long time. First you have to collect the beans, then wrap them in banana leaves to ferment them, then put them in the shade to dry for four days. After this you roast them, peel them and smash them up with a mortar and pestle. Then you have to make it into liquid chocolate, add sugar and blend for 24 hours.

Peeling the beans

When we were making the chocolate we skipped the first steps and started with roasting. Then we had a little grinding contest with a mortar and pestle to see who can grind their beans up the smallest. Who ever won got a prize so we started grinding and when it was over  I won and got a little delicious truffle. After we finished, we ground them up more in a hand cranked metal grinder. Ounce we were done making the chocolate powder, we got to see chocolate liquid and it looked delicious. 

trying "hot chocolate"

Here comes the best part, we got to make chocolate treats, and they were fun to make because we got to put whatever we wanted into them. I picked Oreos and m&ms. I ground up the Oreos and put them into molds and the m&ms into other parts of the mold. The mold I picked was twelve little circle things and the chocolate I picked was milk chocolate, because the dark was too strong for me and my brother.Then after we were finished we got to eat some chocolate. I only ate eight of my chocolates when I got home.

making our chocolate treats