How to make Chocolate: A guide to making chocolate

For those who love chocolate, I’m sure the dream of making your own chocolate has come to mind. Even inside every chocolate loving child, he or she has the dream of owning or living in for that matter, a Willy Wonka chocolate factory. Well the good news is, the reality of making chocolate in your own home is not so far out of reach as you might think.

You’ll need raw cocoa beans, a hammer, an oven, sugar and some molds.

The first thing to do would be to roast the cocoa beans. The best way to go about doing this would be to start of with roasting them at high temperatures and eventually decreasing the temperature and stopping when you notice the beans starting to crack. This process usually takes about 30mins and you can start of at a temperature of 325 – 400 degrees Fahrenheit (163 degrees – 200 degrees Celsius.)

After you’re done with the roasting you’ll need to crack and break the beans up. Spread them on a cloth surface and cover them with another cloth while using a hammer to lightly crack the beans.
This process should be relatively easy as the shells become pretty loose after roasting so be careful not to get them too small though because they might just start to melt. If you have a mortar and pestle, put the crushed beans in there to complete the last bits of mashing it up.

To keep it as simple as possible, the next step involves liquefying the nibs. Usually this can be done by heating the dish up in a pan of water followed by more grinding but if you like a simpler step I’d recommend a Juicer, but it has to be a solid juicer. Feed the crushed bits into the juicer slowly and you’d see a mixture of liquid and husks come out so you probably have to repeat the step with this mixture again till you get the husks out fully. You should have a smooth liquid by the end of this stage.

The final step would be to add sugar to your liquid chocolate mixture. The amount of sugar you wish to add really depends on you and how sweet you want your chocolate mixture to be. After you’re satisfied with the taste of the chocolate, pour it into molds while it’s still hot and be careful not to spill. After that’s done, either refrigerate or freeze your chocolate, or if you don’t mind the wait, let it harden at room temperature. Once it has hardened, remove it from the molds and enjoy your very own chocolate. Now you are your own chocolate maker and supplier!