Chocolate and Mud Making

My last entry featured several very handsome cacao pods. This photo-heavy entry is about what comes next. Some details are left out, but the basic steps are all included.

First the pod is cut open to reveal the white slime covered seeds inside. The goopy seeds are removed from the pod and piled up to ferment for 6-7 days to improve the flavor of the chocolate. From there the seeds are spread out in the sun to dry for another week.

Then comes toasting. The beans are toasted over a low fire (or gas flame in my home) for about 20 minutes. The house will fill with a chocolatey aroma and the beans will sound like popping corn when they are toasted.

Here is a pile of toasted beans ready for shelling. The beans have a thin shell covering the true cocoa goodness that lies within. I squish the bean between my thumb and fingers to crumble the shell off. It's pretty time consuming by hand, so industrially they use rollers and fans to blow the shells away. Recently I saw a news article about a coal power plant that will also burn cacao bean shells from a near by chocolate processing plant in New Hampshire.

Shelled cocoa beans

Grinding the cocoa beans requires a bit of elbow grease when no motor is involved. I use a corn grinder. My host mom uses a large smooth rounded stone that she rocs back and forth over the beans until they are a paste.

My corn grinder, which has yet to grind corn.

Once the paste is fine and runny, it is ready for shaping. I prefer disk form, so I pat them out with my hands and let them harden. And that's the skinny on chcolate making.

Forming chocolate patties is oldly similar to forming salmon patties

The following pictures are from my first experience in mud oven building. With the help of fellow area volunteers and my neighbor kids, we built a 4ft outside diameter, 2 foot inside diameter oven under my house. It was a pretty messing ordeal, which means it was a lot of fun. And finally, a good use for all the mud in my community!

Mixing sand and clay for the inside lining of the oven, where it will act as a heat sink

Preparing the insulation layer, saturated clay slip with sawdust

The dome is a sand form to hold the space and shape of the hollow where I will bake

My semi-finished oven