Day 135: Macondo Camp (Mzuzu)

Today is Cacao Day!

We (together with Julia and Sepp) have signed up for a visit to Kwanza Cacao, a small chocolate factory.

Aida takes this opportunity to roast the two kilos of cacao beans she bought in Tanzania. Mexican style: In a pan on a brazier. Just hot enough so you can turn the beans by hand without burning yourself. The skin of the bean must not crack, otherwise the cacao will become bitter. And the inside must not be purple, otherwise it won't be hot enough inside. A meditative process.

You can also achieve a slight aroma by burning incense (herbs).

The roasted bean, when coarsely crumbled, doesn't taste overly intensely of cacao and is slightly bitter.

At Kwanza Cacao, we learn about the entire production process. The fruit has a white "pulp" inside that is slightly sweet and contains about 50 beans. In the professional process, the entire core is fermented, and only then is the bean dried and roasted, because the pulp still releases flavor.

After roasting, the bean is crunched, pressed at high pressure and perhaps heated again, forming cocoa butter.

Cocoa powder is extracted from the cocoa butter, essentially as "pomace."

70% chocolate, for example, consists of 35% cocoa butter, 35% powder, and 30% sugar.

In large-scale production, cocoa butter is often replaced with palm oil or similar for cost reasons, because cocoa butter brings in more money, for example, in the cosmetics industry.

Kwanza Cacao uses three centrifuges, each producing 4.5 kilograms of chocolate. The mixture is thus stirred continuously for an entire period. The entire production process takes 72 hours. This allows a maximum of 27 kilograms of chocolate to be produced per week.

In between, we get to try chocolate: 90%, 70%, and dark chocolate with Gondolosi powder. We also get a small glass of red wine :-)

After a short break and a look into the production rooms, we get to try milk chocolate with a hint of coffee and two different pralines (candies). Note: White chocolate is pure cocoa butter and therefore more expensive.

All pretty delicious! And of course, we also do a little shopping :-)

At the end of the day, Alida and Juan prepaired us dates filled with cocoa crunch and honey.