In his latest from-scratch project, How to Make Everything's Andy George is on a quest to make his own chocolate bar. While the final product is still in the works, this video shows George learning how to take raw cacao beans and make a Mexican-style bar.
There are two major steps to this process: fermenting and roasting. The cacao beans have to ferment for four days at which point they'll shed their pulp. Once that's happened they dry under the hot sun four another four days if skies are clear, and five or six if it's cloudy. Next comes 30 minutes of roasting over a fire to really bring out the chocolaty flavor.
When the beans have become actual chocolate, they're mixed with cinnamon and sugar and ground in to a paste. That paste is then molded into a bar and left to dry overnight. George discusses the results of his hard work.
"That's really good," George says. "Very rich, it's got a bit of an extra texture to it, you can definitely taste the cinnamon. I like that. We'll have to see if the candy bar that I make compares to this."
