Happy birthday to me! I have been really lucky and have had 2 birthdays on the road; one in Ireland and another in Peru. I started my special day with cake for breakfast and birthday wishes from my family and friends via email. I also celebrated with the people we were staying with from AirBnB. The family was originally from Buffalo, New York, and came to Peru to volunteer at an English school. They fell in love with the country and are now living in Cusco with their four kids. We got along with really well with them and had fun playing together.
As a fun birthday activity, we went to the Choco Museo and took a workshop where we made our own chocolate!
Before we made the chocolate, we learned about the plant it is made from – the cacao bean. These beans grow inside a cacao pod, which is the fruit of the tree and grows on the trunk. There are an average of 40 beans per cacao pod. The flowers of the tree are so small they can only be pollenated by midges. It takes around 3 months for a flower to grow into a cacao pod.
Then we went to the kitchen where we tried a raw bean. It was really bitter and they had a slight taste of bananas, coffee, and olives due to the soil in the area. Part of the process was to roast the beans in a terracotta pot while stirring the beans around. This made peeling off the shells easier.
The next part of the process was to grind the beans to be as smooth and creamy as possible. We ground the beans the old fashioned way with a mortar and pestle and with a modern hand grinder. We turned this into a competition and my dad was one of the winners so he got a little chocolate prize.
Once the beans were ground, we made different types of hot chocolate. The first was a Mayan recipe. It was very bitter and spicy because there was chilli powder but no sugar. Another ingredient for the Mayan’s was human blood. Our teacher asked for a volunteer donor and my mom agreed to do it, so our teacher put on her rubber gloves and got the pin ready… but it was only a joke! 🙂
The next type of hot chocolate we made was much sweeter. It was made with cinnamon, cloves, “guinea pig milk” (actually cow’s milk), and lots of sugar. Everyone in our group got a chance to mix it using a gigantic stir stick, but we all had to sing a song at the same time. Since everyone knew it was my birthday, almost everyone sung happy birthday to me in different languages! It was sung in English, French, German, and two versions in Spanish.
The next step we saw in the chocolate making process was tempering. This is where the melted chocolate is mixed for a really long time to keep the fatty acids together. If this isn’t done properly, the chocolate will show whitish streaks or spots when it is dry. This doesn’t mean the chocolate has gone bad, it is only remnants of the cocoa butter.
Next, we made our own chocolates! We each had our own molds and mine had turtles and starfish. Zoe, my dad, and I picked milk chocolate while my mom picked dark. For the add-ins, I chose crushed Smarties, coconut, sprinkles, and kiwicha, which is a grain from the quinoa family. Other options were salt, ginger, marshmallows, nuts, and cocoa nibs.
This reminded me of our chocolate museum experience in Switzerland. I’m not sure which chocolate I prefer, so I will have to eat more to be able to make a decision. 🙂
My experiences with Peruvian chocolate have been a lot of fun and very delicious! This was an amazing way to celebrate my birthday and I had a great day. The chocolates we made are an awesome and tasty souvenir to bring home. Or, I should say, they were the perfect souvenir… 🙂
P.S. My dad was at the class with us, but he was taking all the photos!
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