Purple Sock Spot: chocolat

You start with farms that grow cacao trees.

Did you know that the flowers and pods can be found on pretty much any part of the tree? Or that the tree has fruit and flowers at the same time? Or that there are three varieties of cacao, with different hardiness (i.e., ease of growth and care) and flavor characteristics? Or that the flowers are less than a centimeter across, but the seed pods are closer to 20cm? Or that due to the need for both hight heat and high shade, cacao is often grown with bananas?

Cacao pods with bag of beans

You harvest twice a year, what with the year-round flowers (unless you carelessly damaged the tiny flowers in your last harvest). If you harvest before or after optimum ripeness, the flavor is negatively impacted.

Cacao pod the first.
This one rattled.

Then you open the cacao pods.

Cacao pod the second.
This one didn't rattle. Also was a bit smaller.

Then you ferment the beans.

Cacao bean, dried.

Then you dry the beans. And sell them. If you didn't do the first stuff right, then picky chocolatiers might not buy your beans.

Cacao bean, half eaten.
Bitter, dry, but definite chocolate (cacao) flavor.

The beans are then pulvarised, the cocoa butter is extracted (and a lot of it gets sold to pharmaceutical and beauty companies), and the dry part is roasted.

White chocolate - basically cocoa butter + sugar + milk + vanilla.
Smooth, sweet, tasty in small quantities, but not my favorite form of chocolate.

Then it gets turned into chocolate (in France, if you have no sugar in it, it's not chocolate, it's cacao. But in solid form, not powder).

Milk chocolate. Cocoa + sugar + milk. Smooth, sweet, very tasty.

Black chocolate. 100% cacao. Basically tasted like cocoa powder (and very much like the bean, but more concentrated flavor), but less dry than cocoa powder.

Dark chocolate - 72% cacao (the rest is pretty much sugar). Quite nice, as dark chocolates go (I tend to prefer milk chocolate).

Palet Venezuela. A nice, rich chocolate, a good balance between milk (sometimes too sweet) and dark (not sweet enough for my taste).

The Palet Venezuela actually quite shiny (and almost crunchy). My camera kept trying to focus on the reflection; this actually gives an idea of how shiny it really was (not visible in previous photo).

I learned all this in today's afternoon session at l'Alliance Française, where I am taking French classes. The proprieter (daughter of the founder) of Maison Castan came to explain about the basics of chocolate, and allowed us the opportunity to taste a few different "levels" of chocolate - white, milk, 72% dark, and black (100% cacao) - as well as a cacao bean and their handmade marshmallows, and finish with a chocolate fondue. Good times.