10 November 2024

Freshly Made, Garden Grown Cocoa Hot Chocolate - Costa Rica [@NLi10]

 This doesn't look like much, but this sweet sticky plant hides a big secret - chocolate!  You can chew on this outer and get the sweetness, but the goodness inside only comes from drying and roasting the beans.


So much like the mighty sloth - patience is required.


You start with the beautiful flowers on the trunk which are pollinated by the tiny mosquitos and grow into the fruit.


This can be done pretty much anywhere in Costa Rica that the insects live - so the middle altitudes are best


And then you take the big grindstones and work the roasted beans until it almost becomes paste-like.  Both of these were dug up on the farm region while building - and are put back into use today (for the tourists mostly)


Mix all that with very hot milk and stir for a bit and you get 100% pure dark fresh hot chocolate - to which even I added a little sugar!


Perfect for a rainy season twilight drink, but quite a lot to go through for that!









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