Making chocolate at home from Amazon rainforest cacao (video & transcript)

Transcript

I decided to make a chocolate bar from cacao beans sourced from the Amazon rainforest this Halloween evening over at Jerry's place. I got myself a coffee bean roaster from Amazon.com, adjusted the rotation speed, and placed it over the stove to roast the beans slowly. You know the beans are dry enough when you start hearing them crack. After about 10 minutes of roasting, it was done. The beans cracked easily in my hands.

Next, I removed the husks from the beans. Then, I moved on to pulverizing them. After five minutes of grinding, I had a 100 percent chocolate paste. To make a 70 percent chocolate bar, I added sugar and stirred it in.

After that, I brought out the mold and started pouring the paste into it. I evened out the paste in the mold and put the whole thing into the fridge for about five minutes. Once it was set, the bar was ready. I easily pushed the bar out from the mold, and there you have it—a bean-to-bar chocolate creation.