Flaming Chocolates

It has "bean" a while since my last post! These are cocoa beans from the Ucayali river area in Peru directly sourced by #MABCO ensuring no child labour was used on the cocoa farms. Looking forward to turning these into chocolate bars. Aiming to have product ready for late March! . .... . #chocolate #craftchocolate #Beantobar #smallbatch #cocoabeans #flamingchocolates #chocolatekitchen #chocolatelab #excited #behindthescenes #gettingreadytosell See more

Let the chocolate making begin!

And here we go!

24hrs later... chocolate!! Still have to let the chocolate fully set...and then temper and form into chocolate bars!

From the nibs...we grind into them into chocolate paste and add sugar to sweeten the bitter chocolate. The mix of nibs and sugar grinds for up to 36hrs to get the smooth mouth feel of rich craft chocolate.

After cracking we have to seperate out the shell from the nibs (which are ground into chocolate) with a process called winnowing

Next up after roasting...cracking the cocoa beans!

Roasting cocoa beans develops the flavour of the bean. Just like in coffee you can have lighter and darker roasts depending on what flavour you want. These are beans from the Dak-Lak region of Vietnam. They have slightly floral and cinnamon notes. I am giving these a slightly darker roast to really hight the flavours of this one!