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Today, after picking up more trekking essentials and a lovely set of x10 binoculars, we set of towards the Museo de Cocoa for a workshop on chocolate making. Peru is responsible for 1.2% of the world's cocoa plantation but export largely to Switzerland for production of fine chocolates. Chocolate production begins with the placement of the cocoa plant. Depending on what the plant is planted with, it can pick up different flavours from the natural environment.
After the beans are roasted and the husks separated from from the bean nibs. Cocoa husks, while normally cast away can used for quite a delicious tea. Next, the nibs are ground into a paste and pressed, separating the oils - cocoa butter - from the other components, Depending on the type of chocolate, different amounts of butter and solids are used. Dark chocolate uses 60% solids and 5% butter, milk is 35% solids and 15% butter and white uses only the butter. After grinding, these are mixed with milk powder and sugar to make the finished product. After doing this, we made a number of cocoa based drinks, I'm a little hazy on the details as I passed out, but the drinks were nice! Following this, we returned to the hostel for a big BBQ, where we met a couple of Aussie girls, including a uni mate's cousin! We stayed chatting for ages before turning in around midnight for the night.
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