Making Chocolate in Sonoma

I'm going to be jumping around a bit in this blog.
Keli and I are in Sonoma now and so we are completely involved in the life here - while at the same time we are trying to remotely manage the farm in Costa Rica.

So I'll be talking about making chocolate here in Sonoma and also posting some pictures of the Chocolate Farm.

My ambition is to make a batch of chocolate where all the ingredients come from our farm.
We make our own sugar from sugar cane at the farm and I love the taste.
We squeeze all the juice out of the cane, get about 50 gallons of juice, boil it all day and we get what in India is called jaggady.
In order to use it for making chocolate, I need to dehydrate it - even a little bit of moisture would be enough to make a whole batch of chocolate seize up solid in the grinder.
And that is not fun!
Its happened to me before and its like chipping the concrete out of a concrete truck that has stopped turning.

I just bought a little oil press so I can make cacao butter from my own beans. This is a bit redundant here in the US, the land of plenty, where everything and anything can be had with an order on the internet.
But in Costa Rica, it will be very important to be able to make my own cacao butter.

This oil press can also make oil from coconuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, etc.
I've already made a little bit of cacao butter and it was, as you can imagine, incredibly good. Such a delicate flavor and so fresh... It didn't look as pretty as the store bought, but who cares?

Its a lot of work but when I'm in California I miss the exercise I get at the Farm. If I can post videos on this blog, you will soon see a video of me cranking out the cacao butter. Below is a video of me and my neighbor Dianey (he deserves a few postings himself - he is an incredible guy.) We are making sugar. You will see the machine that squeezes the juice out of the cane and near the end of the video will be a short view of the cauldron that boils the juice.