Everyday in the Swiss Pavilion you could enjoy the chocolate world in a free workshop. In quite half an hour you make your personal chocolate bar from rosted cocoa beans.
Chocolate, as we know today, was invented in the 1879 by Rudolph Lindt. But the origin of this delicacy was in the South America when Maya population made a hot drink named ‘xocolatl’ for religious celebrations. Today in the world we produce 3 millions tonne of cocoa beans every year and the main part is used to produce chocolate.
From the Maya hot drink the ways to use cocoa beans are changed a lot, but they are in a lot of culinary traditions in the world in a consistent way. The proof is that every language uses a similar word for ‘chocolate’: cioccolato (in Italian), chocolat (in french), chocolate (in spanish and portuguese), qiǎokèlì (in cinese) and shokolad (in russian) are just for example.
Preparing chocolate takes you half an hour and it is very simple. The beginning is rosted cocoa beans and the following step are from our experience in the Choco Atelier in the Swiss Pavilion.
How do you make chocolate? From cocoa beans to the bar
1. Ingredients: cocoa beans, cocoa butter and sugar. If you prefer milk chocolate, use the milk powder. You can find this products in bio and fair trade shops.
2. Peel the cocoa beans and put them in a mortar. Beat the pestle in a circular movement to get a cream.
3. Melt the cocoa butter in a bowl and add other ingredients mixing with a wisk.
4. Spread the cream on the modal by a knife. Then put the model in the fridge for 3 hours.
5. Your personal chocolate bar is ready to enjoy! Do you note it is pretty different to the regular chocolate? It is because in the big chocolate industries the cream you made is put in a special machine for 72 hours to dissolve lumps.
6. Taste it! And if when you take a piece of it, you hear a crack and the bar doesn’t crumble, it means your chocolate is of the best quality.
Originally written by Vera Prada.
Photocredits: “Chocolate” by Judy van der Velden