This year for Valentine's Day
an estimated $116 will be spent per person on their valentine.
Of the popular gifts, candy is number one.
But if you truly love your valentine, you might be willing to put in that extra effort.
And make that box of chocolates entirely from scratch.
But what exactly would that involve?
Well, I'm going to find out.
The first step for making my chocolate bar entirely from scratch
would be harvesting the fruit of a cacao tree.
Since cacao is not native to Minnesota
I'm going to have to head south
to Mexico.
There I met with José, who allowed me to harvest some of his cacao trees.
I found it incredibly captivating
to handle these strange, alien looking pods
that just grow out of a tree.
I''d never really made the connection
that the delicious chocolate we eat, actually comes from a trees fruit.
So I go behind it
José: Yes
There
Andy: And pull
There we go
José: Yes, very good
This one's ripe.
Andy: A few cuts in this.
I got it
Doesn't smell like chocolate
Sure!
José: Look
Andy: So I'm going to eat this?
It's like a bitter chocolate, but also tastes like a fruit. José: Mhm
Trying the raw cacao fruit
really blew away my expectations.
While having a slight bitter chocolate taste at the center
it mostly tasted like a regular fruit
not at all what I expected.
In order to capture that chocolate flavor
and continue with the next step of turning these beans into actual chocolate
I went to Ruviel
who showed me the process of fermenting the beans.
Once removed from the pod
the raw beans are placed into a container
Over the next few days
a combination of microorganisms grow
and begin the fermentation process.
Yeast turn the cacao sugars into alcohol
and other bacteria produces lactic acid and acidic acid
Together all these help produce a distinct chocolate flavor in the cacao beans.
During the process
the container can reach temperatures as high as 140°F
After fermenting for two days
the beans are now swollen and have changed color
mean they are ready to be sun dried
Because they grow the higher quality criollo variety of cacao bean here
the total fermentation time is actually shorter
because of the naturally more mild flavor of the bean
versus other varieties such as the forastero
Once the fermentation stage is done
the pulp around the bean will be completely dissolved
and has drained off
the remaining beans then need to be dried in the sun
Ruviel had me run the rake back and forth through the beans
turning the beans, so that they would dry evenly
This needs to be done regularly, every hour and a half
to two hours
for at least four days.
While the sun is out
My feet are two big, they don't fit between the paths
There's still one more step we need to do to capture that chocolate flavor
roast them.
Roasting the beans, helps make the outer shell easier to remove.
helps sterilize the beans and improves their flavor
After 30 minutes of roasting, the beans are now done. You can tell they're done
because the outer shell will
fall off
and that means it's good to go
I now have the cacao
but there's still one more ingredient that I need for my chocolate bar while still in Mexico
sugarcane
With my last Mexican ingredient collected
it was time to head back home
after my long adventure in Soconusco region of southern Mexico
and process all of my raw ingredients to make my chocolate bar.
Back home, I needed to extract the sugar from the cane
It actually kind of smells like sweet corn
Now it's boiled a while, I've got the syrup extracted and start fishing out sugarcane
after boiling for a few hours and now have a nice sugar syrup leftover
just going to pour that out
However, it's important to remove all the moisture from my ingredients
as it could cause the chocolate to seize and ruin it
which means I need to further dehydrate both my sugar syrup and milk ingredients
After drying overnight in the dehydrator
the milk turned into a thin crusty material
which I broke apart and ground up in my blender
then I tossed my dried sugarcane syrup into a blender
and in a matter of minutes, I had my sugar.
Next, I'll need to remove the outer skin from my cacao beans
After 8 hours of repetitive motion
I finally had 4 lbs of my beans ready
Next, I took some of the beans
and used an oil press to extract the cocoa butter I need for my chocolate
This was kind of a pain
and I think the oil ended up coming out of the wrong spot
but I did succeed in extracting enough cocoa butter
With all my ingredients finally prepped
I headed to K'UL Chocolate
where I met with Peter
Peter: Hey Andy, how are ya?
Andy: Good
So what's the importance of the conching?
Why is it a very important step?
Peter: Ok, mostly you're doing particle size reduction
In order for it to have a nice mouth feel
You want to be at 20 microns or below
in the size of the particles
another part of it is that
all flavors tend to uhh
evaporate
like the acidic acid
it's from the fermentation
lactic acid
those will evaporate
to some degree
Andy: Yeah
Peter: The reason we add the cocoa butter
is that it gives you a more pleasant mouth feel
We're going to put them in the Cui's *I believe he's referring to the brand Cuisinart*
and just buzz them up and roughly
grate them, so that they're small enough for the machines
Andy: After grinding for a while
the once solid beans started to look like chocolate
So it was time to add the cocoa butter
sugar and dried milk
They wind the conching machines for eight hours
used a micrometer
to measure just hot finely the chocolate had been ground
With the chocolate finally at the right consistency
it was time to temper it
Peter: We're going to take about half of this
and just put it on the board
so awkward if you're a righty
so then you move it around
This is to try to form all the same size crystals
beta 5 crystals
that make the chocolate have a nice snap
and keep it from blooming
blooming is when it turns white after it melts and hardens up again
ok yeah, see now it's kind of thick *that's what she said*
Andy: Yeah
Peter: And it's all, all smooth
There's a test that people do, that
you take a piece of paper, and you just dip it a little bit in
like that, it should have a sheen on it, it shouldn't be
gull, it should be shiny, and it should also snap
Andy: That means it's been tempered
Peter: Then it's been tempered correctly, yeah
Peter: In case there is any bubbles, you got little bubbles there
Andy: After quickly cooling in the fridge, Peter and I got to sample
my freshly made chocolate
Peter: We didn't do such a great job moulding these
Peter: There you go.
And it should be shiny
Yeah, it got a snap
Yeah, it's tempered chocolate.
Andy: It's good, it's uh...
very dark... I can taste the
fire roasting and the smoke to it I think
It's good though
Peter: I would call it rustic
Andy: Rustic? Yeah
Peter: Not in a bad way, but rustic, it's got uh..
a very earthy, and you can, you can
taste the smoke
So if you want to make your own chocolate bar from scratch,
how much would it end up costing? Including the travel expenses,
and time for labour, you're looking at a $1705
box of chocolate, which truely shows how much
you love them.
Or if you're single, it's just more chocolate for yourself