Homeschool Writing- Expository Essay by Noa

HOW TO MAKE CHOCOLATE-  by Noa

Most people love chocolate.  When I say people I mean kids, although some adults like chocolate too.  Well today I learned how to make chocolate.  We didn’t actually make a chocolate bar, but we did make chocolate syrup that we poured on apple slices, which was very yummy!  You can’t find chocolate bars on a tree, but you can find cocoa beans on the tree that are used to make the chocolate.  It takes a lot of steps to turn cocoa beans into a chocolate bar, and I am going to explain how.

First, pick some cocoa beans from a nearby tree ( you might have to travel to Peru or Ecuador to find one).  To make the chocolate syrup we used a pretty good sized bowl full of beans, like about fifty or so.      We couldn’t quite understand the Spanish speaking instructor, but we think the beans grow on a small tree and are within reach.   This is different from a coffee bean which grows on a bush.   If you don’t have cocoa beans go to a store and buy cocoa powder.   The cocoa beans are just about as big as a peanut shell at the baseball game.  They are dark brown and surprisingly smell just like chocolate.

Next, fry the beans in a frying pan until they are golden brown (like a marshmallow).  You will know that they are ready when they start to smell like dark chocolate, or they start smoking!  You have to make sure to keep stirring them or they may burn or make crackling noises.   The next step is the get the shells off of the beans.  So after the beans are ready, pour them onto a table cloth.   They are very hot, but you need to get the shells of while they are still hot.  So you might need to use the table cloth to handle them.   The shell can be squeezed until it cracks, and then you pull the bean out of the shell.  The actual bean is completely black, and it is very smooth.

After the beans were taken from the shells, we let them cool for about five or ten minutes.   Then take a handful of the beans and put them in a grinder.  When they come out you have cocoa shavings.  It is not a powder.  If you taste this now it a bit bitter.

The final step is to mix the grindings with milk and a lot of sugar.   Do this in a pot on the stove at a high temperature and stir for 1 to 24 hours (I prefer 1 hour).   The point is to just stir for a long time. 

Then let it cool and enjoy the scrumdidlyumptous (skrum-did-i-lee-um-shis) chocolate.  You can pour it over apples like we did, or freeze it and make a hard chocolate.

The End.