Cacao Farm – Gu Winter term – Belize

Today we got went to a cacao farm! When we got there, it looked liked a small house, but that is exactly what it was. The house is a organic cacao farm where they make all kinds of goodies. In the front yard, we were greeted by a pig, a chick, a puppy, a cat, and our tour guide Juan. We then went on the roof of the house where there was an outside kitchen and a table for us to sit. The deck was really cool because it was such a great day to be outside. The first thing they brought us was hot chocolate, but actually hot cacao. They gave us brown sugar and chili powder that we could add. The first sip was good but just a little bitter, almost like black coffee so some brown sugar and chili powder was a perfect mix. Gosh it was delicious, I’m sure i had about 30 cups. While Juan told us some more information about cacao trees and the farm, we got to taste more chocolate! Ginger, spicy, dark, light, coconut, and orange. Chocolate overload! So many amazing things happening to my taste buds at once. The ginger was my favorite it had the perfect amount of kick to it. After our samples it was time to make our own. We began by taking off the shells of the cacao beans and gathering them together. Then it was time to get serious. grinding the beans was the next step and there were only two speeds to doing this; fast and faster. Even though our tour guide Juan did most of the work, we all had a chance to try this and grind our beans until we got this thick chocolate butter. We added some brown sugar, then put them in heart shape molds for chilling. While waited for our dessert, we had lunch. It was sooo delicious. These wonderful women had been making us a buffet of food while we were on our tour. We had veggie tamales, chicken, rice, and more veggies. We all were beyond stuffed at this point but there was still more chocolate to eat! We tried our creation and it was surprisingly really good. That ended our tour and we all went home with some chocolate, or hot cacao mix!

Jade Gomez, Junior