- Today, I'm gonna turn these cacao pods
into the freshest bar of chocolate you've ever seen.
And then my friend Luke's gonna turn that chocolate bar
back into a cacao pod
that tastes even better than the original.
I don't think anyone's ever done this before.
To start, let's cut this bad boy open.
(knife slicing)
I'm always so surprised
that this is where chocolate comes from.
Inside are fleshy fruit covered seeds.
The gooey flesh of these seeds
tastes a lot like a tropical lemonade,
almost sorta like Starburst or Jolly Ranchers
but it's really hard to describe.
And they're really gooey and squishy.
Take a listen.
(squishing)
Our next step is gonna be to ferment these beans
which will take about a week.
This part of the process really helps to develop
all that flavor that we know and love in chocolate.
Now that the seeds have fermented,
you can see that the color has changed quite a bit.
They start to get almost this dark reddish color
and that means we're ready to roast.
Now that we've roasted them, listen to these seeds.
(clattering)
You can see at this point that they've all turned this dark
roasted golden brown color, almost like a coffee bean
and here's my favorite part.
When I crack it in my hand,
out of this seed will come cacao nibs.
You're gonna have to give me a little while here
'cause I'm gonna be crushing a million cacao seeds
to get out those nibs.
(slow motion crushing)
You might recognize these cacao nibs
from the top of a smoothie bowl
or from a fancy cafe somewhere.
They're a little bit bitter
but this is basically the only ingredient
that you need to make chocolate.
I'm gonna add my cacao nibs to a grinder.
I'm gonna start grinding this.
(grinding whirring)
And at first, it'll turn into a powder
(grinding)
but then once that cocoa butter is released,
it'll turn into a chocolate paste.
I can add just a little bit of sugar into my chocolate
and once I mix that up,
this right here will taste just like a chocolate bar.
(slaps) Next, I'm gonna temper the chocolate.
And to start, I'll pour about 60% of my cocoa powder
into a bowl over a double boiler.
I wanna get this melted chocolate
up to about 114 degrees Fahrenheit.
Once my instant read thermometer reads 114 Fahrenheit,
I'll pour in the remaining 40%
and stir this until it hits 91 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tempering chocolate can definitely be tricky
but if you do follow along with just a couple simple steps
and have a reliable thermometer to work with,
it's actually not too difficult.
Now that we're at 91 Fahrenheit,
let's pour this into our molds.
Spread that chocolate out as evenly as possible
and then we wait.
Cool, that sound's satisfying.
That's amazing, oh (beep).
Now we'll let that chocolate rest
for about a half an hour until it's well tempered.
And now with all this leftover chocolate,
I get to do the best part, lick the spoon. (slaps)
After letting this temper, we have our chocolate bar.
This part of the bottom right here
is smooth as a baby's bottom
which tells me that we did a really good job tempering.
But the more important part is the other side,
the part we're actually gonna look at.
I'm gently gonna peel back the mold
which will expose this perfect chocolate bar.
You have to admit, it's pretty crazy
that we just took a cacao pod and turned it into this.
Now I'm gonna pack up my chocolate bars
with a little bit of aluminum foil
and send 'em off to my buddy Luke
who's gonna work his magic.
(tape roll screeching) (kicks box)
- Ooh (laughs)
Alrighty, let's see what we got from Nick here.
(knife cutting box, paper crinkling)
Ooh, Willy Wonka in the house.
All right, I can work with this.
All right, so now we're gonna Benjamin Button this thing
back into a cacao pod.
Got my double boiler here, chocolate from Nick.
Break them up.
We'll just give these some time.
So I'm gonna need a couple more ingredients
to make the actual cacao pod.
Flour, sugar, baking soda and baking powder,
cocoa powder just for a little extra flavor.
Mix this up.
Milk, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, two eggs here.
Gonna mix that up now.
The best part, we're adding Nick's chocolate
and then we'll just mix this together.
One cup of water.
Super, super moist.
Alrighty, here we go.
So we're gonna bake this in the oven at 350 for a half hour.
So I wanna start by carving all the crusts off.
(knife scraping cutting board)
Level out the top.
So soft.
This part is pretty fun.
Okay, I'm just gonna carve the general shape at least.
Fill it with some chocolate buttercream.
Top it off with this guy
and then just gonna let it cool in the fridge a little bit.
Aright, just gonna jump in here,
start carving down to our cacao pod.
So I'm starting on the top
and just going down kinda like a football.
All right, so now I'm just gonna go ahead
and do the indents that run down the side.
So this is just the layer of buttercream
that the fondant will stick to.
Just gonna smooth it out.
Super handy dandy note card.
Carving away at the buttercream.
So I have my modeling chocolate here
and I twist it, kinda push them along.
Okay, a little bit of cornstarch.
All right, so our cake is all firm. (slaps)
Cover this in our modeling chocolate.
Make sure it's really stuck to our buttercream
pulling and pleading, closed up along the bottom.
Get all those creases in to our bud here.
Just gonna texture it right before going into the airbrush.
So I'm gonna start by doing a very light layer of yellow
and this really kinda pushes the color all around too.
Now we got some orange going on.
So with the brown, I'm gonna go into
each like visible indentation that I see.
Let's paint this bud.
Brown food dye and grain alcohol.
The grain alcohol is gonna make it dry really fast.
So I don't have to worry about anything smudging
like I did with the airbrush and water
and just splatter all over the cake.
Just like the cacao pod.
Now I'm just gonna go along
and do like the bigger splatters and blemishes.
All right and there you go. (exciting music)
What do you think?
- Are you kidding me?
That looks insane.
- I couldn't have done it
without your beautiful cacao nibs, man.
- I really, really wish I could taste that right now.
- All right, what do you say we cut this guy?
- Let's cut right into that bad boy.
- Wow, here's the reveal.
- Sweet.
- Cheers. It's delicious.
Really is. (laughs)
(upbeat music)