Roasting Cacao

We began with the pod and decided to go all the way from pod to chocolate.  Fermenting was interesting since the mass couldn't hold the heat in for very long and often times I would end up holding the plastic bag they were fermenting in to give the yeast enough warmth to grow.  It took twice as long as it should usually take to ferment the beans but they ended up with a wonderful aroma.

Then we dried the beans and kept them sealed up so as not to absorb odors from anything in the kitchen we might be cooking or storing nearby.  For a little bit they were tossed in the freezer but this doesn't seem to have affected the final roast any.

While trying to figure out what to do at this point we weighed our options and the costs of those options.  We didn't want to try the oven again since it didn't work out so well the other times we tried it.  After some time we found that Pampered Chef had this air fryer that came with a rotating basket.  It looked almost exactly like some of the coffee roasters that were recommended to use to roast cacao beans.  Although not always in stock it was one of the items you could get half off if you threw a party and got enough sales.  So, for under $150 we got this and followed the recommendations in the Making Chocolate book by Dandelion Chocolate.  Looking back it could possibly have used another minute in the roaster but the fragrance is awesome.  As far as I know it's the only Texas fermented chocolate in existence as craft chocolate makers purchase beans that have already been fermented and dried.  Now all I have to do is get Claude (the cacao tree growing in my office) to produce pods and sugar from southeast Texas and I will then be able to produce a 100% Texas chocolate bar.