Sydney’s Corner: All About Chocolate

Who likes chocolate?  This blog is going to be really sweet, because it is all about chocolate.  Let’s first start with some facts about chocolate.

Origins

Chocolate was to believed to have first grown in Mesoamerica.   Mesoamerica is an area of southern Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.  People think that chocolate has been made for 4000 years.  It first started as a drink made by the Olmecs.  The chocolate drink was really bitter.  When Cortes, an explorer from Spain, came to Mesoamerica in 1519 the chocolate drinkers, the Aztecs, wanted to share their drink with him, because it was so good.  Cortes brought back the chocolate drink to Spain.  He also changed the recipe by adding lots and lots of sugar to make it sweeter.  It is also said that Cortes introduced chocolate to the Caribbean before he sailed back to Spain.

All About the Plant

Chocolate comes from the fruit from the cocoa tree.  The fruit is football shaped and is 8 to 14 inches long.  The fruit can be many different colors depending on how ripe it is.  To make chocolate they use the seeds inside the fruit.  The seeds from the fruit are called beans.  The beans are bitter and yucky tasting.  To give the chocolate a sweet taste they dry the beans and add sugar to it.

The process to make chocolate is

• Pick the fruit and cut it open to get the beans out
• Ferment the beans
• Dry the beans
• Roast the beans
• Squish the beans into powder
• Mix the ingredients to make the delicious chocolate
• After all this hard work, you pop it in your mouth and eat the chocolate

Types of Chocolate

There are 3 types of chocolate.  Here are the 3 types of chocolate

• Dark Chocolate is mostly ground up chocolate bean with little bit of sugar and milk added.
• Milk Chocolate is 40% ground up chocolate bean, 40% sugar, and 20% milk
• White chocolate has only the coco butter, but not the chocolate powder in it.  It also has sugar and milk added to it.

Facts about chocolate

Did you know this?  Chocolate was used as money because it was valuable.  A mule or donkey cost 50 chocolate beans and a loaf of bread cost 2 beans.

A lot of cocoa farms are small family run farms.  Chocolate can only grow in tropical places such as West Africa, SE Asia, and South and Central America.  In order to grow chocolate it needs to be in the shade.