Recipe: Homemade Chocolate

Chocolate is one of my very favorite foods, right up there with ice cream and bread. So when two of our students asked me if I would help them make chocolate for a class project, I was totally game.

I had never made chocolate from scratch before, but since cacao beans are plentiful and cheap here in Nicaragua, it seemed like the ideal time to try it out. Farmers in southeastern Nicaragua began growing cacao years ago as a cash crop for export to chocolate-making hubs like Switzerland, Germany, and the US. Only more recently have a handful of Nicaraguan companies been taking advantage of the abundance of Nicaraguan cacao to produce chocolate domestically as well.

We visited one such company just outside of Matagalpa when we were first in Nicaragua almost two years ago. El Castillo de Cacao, like other Nicaraguan chocolate producers, makes a rustic chocolate that isn't as smooth and creamy as the kind you get from industrial chocolate factories. But it has its own unique appeal all the same, with a grainier texture and a strong cacao flavor. This was the kind of homemade chocolate we set out to make, with a recipe from El Castillo de Cacao itself.

El Castillo de Cacao Chocolate Recipe

(This recipe makes a lot of chocolate. Feel free to half it for a smaller batch).

Ingredients

2 pounds and 2 ounces of cacao beans

2 pounds of sugar (You could probably decrease this for a more bitter chocolate).

2 cups of milk

1.5 cups of powdered milk

1 teaspoon of salt

Nuts or dried fruit (optional)

Directions

The first step is to toast the cacao beans. We did this in a big, cast-iron pot over an open fire, but I imagine you could do it in a big pot on the stove over high heat as well. Stir the beans regularly to toast them evenly for 20 minutes. They should seem slightly burnt but not completely charred when you remove them from the flame.

Let the beans cool for a few minutes. When they are cool enough to handle, peal them by rubbing them in between your palms and letting the dried skins drop back into the pot. When they are all pealed, remove the skins by pouring them into a bowl in front of a fan, which will blow the skins away as you pour. Do this several times if necessary, pouring the beans back and forth between bowls.

Next, mill the beans. This step is fairly easy here in Nicaragua, where nearly everyone has a hand-crank mill in their homes – and, failing that, where there are industrial mills to grind corn for tortillas in every small town. If you can't find a mill, you could probably use a food processor or blender. You may need to mill the beans several times – the finer the grain, the better the chocolate will be. At this stage, the cacao oils emerge and produce a sort of thick cacao paste.

Now, in a big pot over the stove, heat up the milk and then add the sugar. When the sugar melts, add the ground cacao paste, the milk powder, and the salt. Stir it all over low heat, mixing it constantly. When it has boiled and is well mixed, remove the pot from the fire. Let it cool.

Before the chocolate has cooled completely, shape it. We rolled them into little balls and let them cool like that. You could also try making special shapes with cookie cutters, or just letting it cool in one big mass on a cookie pan. If you want to add nuts or fruit, roll them into the chocolate or just put them on top.