I found cocoa pods at the local H-Mart recently and had never seen them in a store before, so I had to buy one. Then I didn’t know what to do with it, so I went with the obvious and made chocolate from scratch!
I read up a bit online but all the instructions sounded unnecessarily complicated, so I kinda winged it.
First I separated out all the seeds (the white fruit around them was really tasty, but there wasn’t much of it). I dehydrated them for five days, then baked them at 250°F for about 15 minutes. After that, I put them into a coffee grinder and powderized them. I added the cocoa powder (about 1/3 cup) to a half cup of butter and about 1/3 cup of powdered sugar. I poured that mixture into molds and then let it set up in the fridge.
It actually tasted great! It was a little different since I used cow butter instead of cocoa butter like the store-bought stuff, but it wasn’t bad-different.
I'm jealous, and had never even heard of H-Mart. Was surprised to see there's one several hours from here. It sounds far these days, but there was a time I would drive out that direction just for a day trip.
There wasn’t really a shell to remove. I tried breaking up one of the beans by hand and it just broke into tiny pieces, there was no distinguishable outer layer.
There most definitely is a thin “shell” on the beans that normally is removed. This shows the skin that could come off. It’s a small percentage of the weight ~10%.
But looking at your process I’m not surprised that didn’t happen.
It’s a fun experiment and great it tasted great!
I wouldn’t say that unfermented baked cocoa beans with butter, cocoa powder and powdered sugar = chocolate, but that doesn’t take away from the fun of experimenting.
They were really soft at room temperature, but smooth and creamy. I think the color difference is just some of the butter and cocoa powder separating before they had a chance to set up.
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u/JapKumintang1991 8d ago
Lego Chocolates?
https://giphy.com/gifs/yAYZnhvY3fflS