Making chocolate is one of the most popular farmstays activities and is enjoyed by all the family.  The recipe for home-made hot chocolate is simple and the ingredients (chocolate beans from the cacao tree, rich full-fat milk fresh from the cow, and cane sugar from the organic plantations outside the door) are all available on the farm.  

Chocolate is made from a fruit, cacao, which grows in oval pods on the cacao tree.  Most of the farmstays on our programme have some cacao on the farm, either just for hot chocolate for the family or as a commercial crop.  The white flesh around the cacao beans inside the pod is delicious to eat as a fruit.

The cacao pods are picked from the trees, then the cacao fruit is taken out of the pod and left to ferment for a few days.  The cacao is then spread out in the sun for the white flesh to dry ready to make the the beans inside into cocoa or chocolate.  

The dried cacao beans are toasted in a pan over the fire and then the skin must be rubbed off them.  The chocolate beans are then ground up to make cocoa powder - young farmstays visitors enjoy turning the handle of the chocolate grinder.  The cocoa butter is not extracted, as it would be in a commercial chocolate factory, so the ground cocoa is slightly sticky rather than dry, and your hot chocolate will be rich and tasty.  

The cocoa powder is cooked with milk and sugar to make delicious, fresh, home-made hot chocolate, a breakfast favourite and highlight of a farmstays holiday.  Or you can make milk chocolate sauce to pour over fresh fruit.  Come and try it for yourself...  

To make chocolate bars, the cacao would be "conched", in a machine which pounds the chocolate paste for several days to make it really smooth.  Then it would be mixed with sugar (for dark chocolate) or sugar and milk powder (for milk chocolate) and put into chocolate moulds to make bars or other shapes.  We don't have a conch on the farms, but you might be able to experiment with some simple chocolate moulds to make basic dark chocolate shapes or milk chocolates with nuts or fruit.

Ecuador's cacao is mostly exported and some of it is amongst the best in the world, used by internationally-renowned chocolatiers for luxury fine chocolates.  CRACYP, the parent NGO of this project, has helped to develop organic chocolate production in the area and the consortium of farmers are now exporting organic cacao beans to a chain of fair trade stores in Italy. 

Chocolate bars are not as popular in Ecuador as they are in Europe or the States, but the market is growing.  The warm temperatures in this tropical area make it difficult to store bars of organic chocolate - so it's best to eat it straight away!  Usually processed overseas, fine Ecuadorian cacao is turned into delicious dark chocolate.  Try some fine Ecuador chocolate to see if the taste tempts you to visit Eco-Friendly Farmstays for a chocolate-making experience of your own...