First chocolate

Today is a great day: Marsha and Christoph make their first chocolate - quite rudimentary. The roasted beans are ground in a hand mill, which is normally used to grind malt.

In Guatemala, the Maya use this kind of mill to make the flour from soaked corn kernels for baking tortillas. We could experience this live on the finca "Don Peter", when Heidi - one of the daughters of our employee Chepe – burned out herself with such a mill. Marsha tried to do it as well.

Our chocolate is made out of 60% cocoa, 10% cocoa butter and 30% sugar. After grinding the beans, the mass comes together with cocoa butter and sugar into a bain marie. As soon as this mixture has liquefied in the water bath and has heated up to a temperature of 47 ° Celsius, a very decisive process for the chocolate comes: tempering! The mass must slowly cool down to almost 28 ° Celsius, in order to be subsequently brought back to 32 ° Celsius.

Tempering of chocolate is necessary to form the correct crystal shape while cooling in the chocolate. Therefore, pre-crystallization is actually the better expression for it, but in the literature, the term tempering is usually used. If the chocolate is melted and has a temperature above 35 ° C, it does not contain any crystals. If the chocolate cools down, depending on the temperature, one of six different crystal shapes is produced. However, only one form is desired, since only these have the following positive attributes in the final product:
- beautiful glossy surface
- hardness / good breaking
- soft melting character
- good shrinkability
- pleasant color

Without or by incorrect tempering, the undesired crystal shapes are formed. The consequences for the finished product are:
- gray-white sprinkled chocolate
- no shrinking capability
- granular and brittle structure
- rapid melting on contact
- problems when solving from the mold

Subsequently, the liquid chocolate is poured into molds and refrigerated. In the evening, we take the bars out of the molds, actually they are falling out of the mold - obviously a sign for a successful tempering. Also the luster, the color and the overall optics is fantastic! We are excited!

And how does it taste? Too sweet!! We think that this was due to the use of powdered sugar, which dissolves better, but was simply too much in the total quantity.