My Spanish classes are in the morning and my school holds cultural activities every afternoon. A favourite of all students is the visit to a family-owned artisanal chocolate maker. It’s in a house only 1-2 kilometres from Antigua, but the traffic and narrow roads make it a 20 minute trip in a chicken bus. The teacher leading the tour explained that the prices here are way below market rates and begged us not to try to bargain for bulk discounts.
One of the family explained (in Spanish) that chocolate comes in pods of about 40 cocoa beans. She showed us the raw beans and the much darker roasted beans, then crumbled the skin / shell off the bean and crushed it into nibs. These are apparently really nutritious and tasty when added to muesli or in cooking. I can confirm that they’re quite tasty on their own because she crushed a few more and passed them around.
We then saw a demonstration of the nibs being ground with water in a machine in the main room, but I assume there’s a bigger machine out the back somewhere. They then added raw cane sugar and honey to the resulting chocolate paste, and explained that lots of other flavours could be used. The shop used cardamom, chilli, coffee, mint, cinnamon and even rice to flavour the chocolate.
I’m not sure how it gets from the runny paste we saw to the next stage, but we were taken to another room to observe a group of people pounding about 40kg of chocolate into shape on a reed mat. They were behind glass, which I hope was to ensure a sterile environment, but the pounding was done by hand. One hammered his fists down into a 20kg ball, then passed it to another, who sliced it in two and passed half on again. In all, four young men were pounding multiple balls of various sizes, cutting them down further and further until they’re about 200g each. These are pressed into shape by hand.
Back in the shop, we were able to taste all the flavours, and I found the basic varieties too sweet. Even the dark chocolate was 25% sugar, so I imagine the others were around 50% sugar. I chose a few blocks, including one of 100% cacao, which was too intense to eat quickly. On opening it, I found the flat side had maintained the impression from the reed mats. Gram for gram, the prices were equivalent to paying full price for a block of Lindt in Australia, so I’m not game to see what they charge in town, but I’m loving the dark, dark, dark chocolate in small doses.