Honest Chocolate

What do a juicer, a vacuum cleaner, rotisserie oven, a pressure cooker and a hairdryer have in common? They're all used to make Honest Chocolate at the Woodstock Exchange! I spent a delightful morning in a "bon-bon making" workshop yesterday learning to not be afraid of the dark - dark chocolate, that is. It was more about the journey of chocolate rather than actually making the chocolate but what fun!

Anthony and Michael started their chocolate-making journey at the same time, but in different countries and then joined forces. Michael sounds like a bit of a MacGyver, hence all the unorthodox gadgets to produce the chocolate. Beans are dried in the adapted rotisserie oven:

Then crushed in the juicer to remove the husks, which are sucked up by the vacuum cleaner:

Other tools of the trade:

                            

The warm chocolate is hand-tempered in a hypnotic display of handwork:

The chocolate is made from cacao paste, cacao butter and sweetened with agave; it is free from preservatives and artificial flavourings. The finished products are finally packaged in eco-friendly paper decorated with designs from local artists. I loved that the chocolate is made by hand and sourced straight from the farms in Ecuador and soon from Tanzania.  

As a little extra, we got to dip dried naartjie slices in the chocolate and garnish with a sprinkling of buchu leaves...which reminded me of my grandmother's koeksusters made with dried citrus peel and the buchu she boiled up for us to drink whenever we had a sniffle. Standing in the tiny kitchen, with the electricity tripping every now and again, watching Anele the chocolate-maker flick his wrists back and forth rhythmically, it all felt, well, honest.

Go check it out here: Honest Chocolate