Leaving the cold winter in France behind for warm weather, tropical scenery and beautiful beaches... Join me!

Saturday, January 22, 2011

The Chocolate House/Factory


We went to buy some local chocolate.  I have to say that while the taste is good- the texture is sooo grainy that it's not the rich and smooth experience you get when eating French, Swiss or Belgium chocolate! haha!  I'm glad these countries BUY their chocolate from Costa Rica and other chocolate producing countries... but I'll leave the chocolate making to those who do it best- EUROPEANS!



These are the actual cacao beans being ground up into a thick paste - almost the same consistency as  ground up raw peanut butter... It almost tastes a bit buttery, too.. But, you definitely have the bitter, chocolaty taste when you try this. It's a little too bitter to eat by the spoonful, so don't even think about it!  It looks and SMELLS delicious when you are standing right in front of it and it's also a bit warm as it's ground up freshly.  It hardens very quickly, though.. and becomes so hard you can't really break it off into pieces- you have to melt it... 


YUMMMMM!!!  Freshly ground cacao paste

Inside the big jars are small squares and rectangles that are wrapped up in saran wrap for  sale.  Each one has a different mix of ingredients- for instance:  pepper, nutmeg, coconut, cinnamon, coffee, plain, pure (no sugar).  They are in small compressed squares or rectangles and you just eat them like that- they are all, of course, sweetened with sugar but there is no coco butter so the texture is really quite different than what you'd buy in the supermarket that's been mixed with other stuff.  

In the small jars are samples- just in powder form of the bars for sale. 

The work table


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