Playing with chocolate

Check out the Maquipucuna Reserve in Ecuador.  Good folks doing great things for the planet, local farmers and the environment!

We are making cocoa and coffee soap for the Reserve to do our part in reducing our carbon footprint and supporting the efforts of the founders.  So last week I got to get my hands in the Ecuadoran chocolate!  The first time I made soap for them I used cocoa beans which had to be hulled first and then chopped.  This was a rather labor intensive chore and added a significant amount of time to the process.  It also made it difficult to differentiate between the coffee soap and the cocoa soap because they both had a dark graininess to them.  Only the delicious fragrance told the tale of who was who (or is that whom???)

Last week I used finely ground cocoa beans, in other words pure chocolate.    I again had to chop the cocoa, but this time my hands were coated with the most delicious smelling chocolate.  I lavished and languished as long as I could with the chocolate on my hands just enjoying the aroma, the butteriness and the utter richness of the whole experience.   The bars came out looking like tablets of the finest chocolate and smelling good enough to eat!  I had to move them into the soap drying room immediately so that no one, including myself would accidentally eat one!  In case you don’t already know, chocolate ranks among the most important things in my life!  My current favorite is Chocolove gourmet bars – any variety, you really should try it.  (I recommend the ginger, the cherry or the jalapeno)

Check out the website of the Maquipucuna Reserve – wonderful people doing fabulous work.

http://www.maqui.org