On our way to Puyo we took a detour from the E35 and visited a Cocoa farm in the jungle. It was a really neat experience where we got to make chocolate and then take it away with us!
Step1 – Pick the Cocoa pod from the tree, open it up and strip the beans from the ‘tube’. The fleshy wrapping arounds the beans is also very tasty.
Step 2 – Dry the beans in the sun. This would take some time and so we carried on with some beans that had already been dried.
Step 3 – Toast the dried beans over a fire for 6-7 minutes. This makes the outer shell easier to peel from the inner bean. You can make tea from the bean’s casing and we did try some later (Typhoo has nothing to worry about).
Step 4 – Remove the bean casing (helps if you have asbestos-coated fingers).
Step 5 – Grind the beans. We pushed our beans through the hand operated grinder three times. It was quite an effort!
Step 6 – Smear the resulting paste (chocolate) on a leaf and place in the fridge to cool.
Step 7 – Drink a cup of hot chocolate while our chocolate cools
Step 8 – Get mauled by the farm’s pet parrot
Step 9 – Collect our cooled chocolate and be on our way.
What a lot of work to get a piece of chocolate.
Hi there
Such a dangerous place a Chocolate Farm, I would have been tempted to stay a while!!!! Loved sharing your experience!
An experience of beauty, as indeed we may classify the Ecuadorean experience to date, is a joy forever – including the chocolate manufacture. While Typhoo have nothing to worry about, can the same assurance be extended to Cadbury!
As a chocoholic, that would be heaven 🍫
Loved the parrot, so funny!