Chocolate

Chocolate is one my favorite foods in the world, and in el Museo de Chocolate in Cusco, we got to become a part of the Andean chocolate making process. We started by tasting cocoa beans that had been fermenting-an initial taste akin to bananas and wine following a bitter after taste not at all reminiscent of a Hershey’s bar. We proceeded to toast the beans to help release the chocolate flavor. Then we peeled off their outer shells which we used to make a type of chocolate tea. We took the toasted beans and ground them up into cocoa powder and used this to make various ancient drinks, including Mexican hot chocolate. Yummm… the best part was getting the final familiar chocolatey product and actually making our chocolates. We added various ingredients and molded our candies and in one hour we were eating chocolate that we had made ourselves!