To make chocolate, you have to ferment the beans, dry, them, roast them, grind them into a paste, and then add them to your recipe. Did you know that the Mayans all found this out by accident!
The fermentation is done by leaving the cacao seeds exposed to air which carries bacteria. Today the fermentation is done in a controlled manner. Centuries ago, the Mayans found this out by accident. People dropped cacao plants causing the beans to crack, and afterwards found them to have an alcoholic taste. At first, people used made alcohol but threw away the beans. Then some Mayans discovered that after the beans had dried up, they could be heated up giving the beans a nice chocolatey taste. I can tell you that when the chocolate beans get roasted, they give off a pleasant aroma.
The final phase to making chocolate is to deshell the beans and grind them up. Mayans did this with their traditional piedra de moler or grinding stone. Some people may have used their elbows to smash the beans. But today there are machines that process the cacao faster. Once the chocolate turns into a ground paste, it is gooey. It can be hardened to create disks that can later be melted in water to make the drink. The chocolate can also be mixed with powdered milk and sugar to make regular milk chocolate.
Chocolate is very much tied to its environment. Cacao is grown in the hotter lowlands in Guatemala, where there are more jungles, heat, humidity and mosquitos. Cacao trees are abundant in the South of Guatemala. Antigua is not the best place for cacao trees because the climate is too cool, and the land is too high.
