Project 39: Materials

A few months ago I found a post on the Instructables web site that mentioned how easy it is to make chocolate from scratch. It had never occurred to me that this was something people might do at home. I immediately contacted an online acquaintance who is a local food blogger to see if she would be interested.

Jenni is the brains behind The Balanced Pastry Chef. She is hosting me this week so we can figure out if this chocolate making thing is something that people really can (or should) do in their kitchens.

Above you can see our materials. I bought a pound of cocoa beans from Chocolate Alchemy. John has a great selection of beans on his site and tons of information on chocolate making. I chose his La Red beans from the Dominican Republic because he said that they were very forgiving for beginning roasters. We also need sugar and some cocoa butter (optional, for texture), which I bought in the health and beauty section of the grocery store.

I’ll show you how we used the rest of the equipment tomorrow when I share our chocolate making steps. Check back and see our failures and (hopefully) successes!

Next: The first attempt