This is the tastiest hand-crafted chocolate in the world! A bold statement that I will prove to anyone who makes the trek to visit us. Beto (short for Alberto) is a local Tico who lives down near the beach and crafts melt-in-your-mouth chocolate (dark and milk) from cacao pods grown on a plot of land up in the hills. His whole process is very low tech and the results are amazing.
Friends introduced us to Beto at their home where they organized a "Chocolate Making Party." M and I are very interested in how to make chocolate with a minimum of equipment. I've watched YouTube videos where homemade chocolatiers use machines in a complicated process to get results. Beto showed us that all those bells and whistles are superfluous when a little elbow grease is applied.
For the steps of fermenting and roasting cacao beans, read my blogpost.
Rey and Stephanie hosted at their lovely home. Beto arrived with a couple of pounds of roasted cacao beans. The paper thin skin covering the beans needed to be removed. We sat around the patio table by the pool, chatted and cracked the beans. Beto with the bowl of beans stepped over to the grass and chafed the husks.
Next step is grinding the beans to create a smooth cream. This galvanized steel grinder reminded me of one that my grandmother had in her kitchen. My grandfather purchased sides of beef to store in the freezer. To make ground beef, my grandmother used this type of grinder to shred it.
Beto has a specialized set of metal plates attached to the output of the grinder. The 2 plates are positioned only millimeters apart to squeeze the cacao to a creamy texture. The friction is so intense that the cream is warm when it is ejected from the output.
We each took turns at the hand crank as Beto dropped just a couple of beans at a time into the mouth of the grinder. It was heavy work. About 20 revolutions was all that any one of us lasted before rotating out.
Our hard work produced a large bowl of pure cacao cream into which Beto added a golden liquid of honey made from condensed sugar cane. Beto grows the sugar cane too. His production process is fully vertically integrated.
The sugar cane honey gives the cacao cream a light, sweet flavor and a malleable smooth texture. Beto divided the batch into 2 bowls. One bowl for dark chocolate and the other bowl for milk chocolate where Beto added powdered milk. This is the only element of the chocolate process that is "store bought."
Now, we were ready to make our own chocolate bars. We each brought a few items from home to add to our designer chocolate bars. I brought almond butter. Beto had shredded toasted coconut and toasted ginger. There were chopped peanuts, almond slivers and chopped dates. The five of us sat around the table with square sheets of plastic wrap laid in front of us. Taking a large spoon, I spread a layer of chocolate about 5" long, 3" wide and a half inch thick on the plastic. The chocolate was of a consistency that it could be shaped and keep its form. I laid a thin line of the toasted ginger and carefully rolled the plastic over the chocolate to make a "cigar."
Each of us, joyfully experimented with the different toppings and in the end, we each had 4 chocolate cigars to take home. Beto only asked $10 USD from each of us. He sells a chocolate cigar which is the equivalent to 4 oz for 1 mille colones ($1.75.) Though you have to get your order made well in advance. Since he is practically a one man operation (his young family helps), his means of production is limited.
It will be a couple of years before our cacao trees will produce pods. Until then, we will be faithful clients of Beto.
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