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How to make chocolate
Did you know that with the right equipment, some instructions and some time you can make chocolate at home? Absolutely! Imagine being able to give chocolate gifts, not just chocolates that you had melted and molded but super luxurious chocolates that you had controlled every step, from roasting the beans to pouring the melted chocolate into the molds! Making chocolate is a difficult craft but one you can learn. If you are up for the challenge of experimenting and creating creamy chocolate on your own then read on!
Steps on how to make chocolate
The chocolate you make will be pure chocolate, not the chocolates you get in a gift box. That takes even more time and patience than either Mom or the kids may have. Start your project with raw cocoa beans, which can be found through many online sites.
Beans need to be roasted for how to make chocolate by spreading them in a single layer on a pan, and leaving them in the oven for approximately 30 minutes at 400F degrees. Allow them to cool, and then peel off the husks, which is a really fiddly job.
Next, you\'ll want to break them up. Spreading them out on a tea towel, placing another over top and using a hammer will work, but possibly too well. A more restrained and easy to control way of breaking them into pieces is with a mortar and pestle. Once you have pieces, put them in a clean pepper or other mill and grind them. While learning how to make chocolate, be careful though, because as the bits get smaller, they tend to liquefy. Grind just to the point where you can put them back in a dish and use the mortar and pestle again for the final mashing.
By now you have a mush. Heat the dish in a pan of water, and then grind a little more in the mortar. It should have reached a fairly smooth consistency after this stage. Now you can add a drop of mint flavoring, and your sugar. A rule of thumb is 1/2 cup sugar per pound of cocoa beans processed, but you may want to start out with less, in order to see how sweet it gets. Pour into molds, and you have pure chocolate.
How to make chocolate >
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