How Miami’s Chocolate Master Creates the Perfect Bar of Chocolate — Handmade

[Music] we can smell all the aroma come out when you crush them which is really nice all those beautiful chocolate flavors chocolate is is happiness it's something that can you know really suit your mind and soothe your soul I think for a long time we've grown up with this idea that chocolate is either dark or sweet and that's it chocolate can be a lot more just like wine just like fruits so this is basically how we receive the cacao the beans themselves are already fermented and dried and we bring from different farms throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and we keep them all single origin so chocolate is a fruit it grows on trees it comes from the cacao pod inside you'll find a pulpy fruit that is called Bala it has the consistency of soursop and then the flavor of a lychee in our case what we're looking for is the actual seed part and that's the cocoa bean what ultimately will be transformed into chocolate this variety that we have from Peru is from marañon it's considered to be one of the rarest cacao in the world it was thought extinct for about a hundred years and it grew wild in that time it actually looks like milk chocolate because about 40 percent of the beans themselves are considered white beans or kind of caramel colored and then over in Guatemala we also receive this variety which tastes a lot like oranges do they grow a lot of oranges on that particular farm so each farm and each country and even specific regions have different flavors we have chocolates that can be nutty earthy fruity and that's all coming from the soil where it's grown but also the bacteria that plays a role in its fermentation we will hand select all the best cocoa beans for us to use we're really looking to take out anything that's not a cacao sometimes you've got twin beans like these what will happen is they won't roast evenly at the end of the day we're trying to make a better product and what's been commercially available so Trust is is very important you'll notice all these fissures inside the beam and then that means that when the bacteria came in during the fermentation it really broke down the cell walls and it let all those flavors mix in so that's what we're really looking for is color flavor and fissures in terms of quality of cacao so we fought it down just to make sure it's even because we want an even roasting what happens in roasting is something called a mailer reaction the amino acids and the sugars start to interact with the heat and it starts to develop the flavors and also the aroma that comes from the cacao so similar to sort of searing a piece of steak the same is happening with our cacao in that process we let it cool down usually for a few hours you have the shell which is called a husk and the nib is ultimately what becomes chocolate so a lot of people think that dark chocolate is bitter and the reality is when it's bitter it's typically over roasted which means that it's burned that's why we medium roast it's lighter its fruity you can taste all these different things and when we do chocolate tastings people can really appreciate that we have an Ecuadorian that tastes like raisins we have a Guatemalan that tastes like oranges and then we have our Haitian that tastes super earthy so then we let the cacao arrest from roasting and then we'll want a winnow and that process is simply cracking the bean and removing the shell you'll notice as most of the shell goes out towards the outside and then the nib stays in place sort of how heavy it is so this is the machine that we use now how could sort of been monopolized for so many decades so there's not really equipment that we can use a small craft producers we have a champion juicer from Amazon and then we have a shot sack from Home Depot and the way it works is just like I was crushing it with a hammer the Champion Juicer will crush all the beans and instead of blowing air into it we have a vacuum which has that same method as the beans drop down they're crushed as air sucks in it'll take that lighter shell or husk up into here and then that heavier nib will fall down because it avoids the air that's blowing in there fifteen to twenty percent of the bean itself is hot which in most places becomes trash but we actually don't throw out a single piece of husk for one of the big ways that we found a home for them has been in beers it produces a different layer of flavor when they ferment the beer with it you can actually brew tea with it and it tastes almost like this earthy hot chocolate so we're gonna pre mill it in order to make it a little bit smoother on our conjuring machines the friction is creating heat and the heat is activating the cocoa butter that's present in the bean and that's what will cause it to liquify starts to resemble when you start making brownie batter so now that same cacao know suddenly is liquid this is what we would call a chocolate liqueur it's just the nib broken down so it's almost like a very chunky peanut butter very very astringent you sort of feel here the texture is quite gritty so we would need to smooth it out add sugar if we're gonna make milk chocolate add milk in order to transform it into the chocolate we're used to I spent part of my childhood in Barranquilla and Colombia chocolate for Colombians is simply made it's just very very good dark chocolate and that was something very satisfying and something that I really enjoyed and stuck with me for many years and then from there it will go into our refiners so originally these machines are actually nut grinders so they're used primarily in India to make nut butters sometimes with peanuts in this machine you find two giant stone rollers and a granite slab and what they do is two things one refine down so it's smooth it's velvety like we're used to with chocolate the other thing that's doing is a process called contouring and what it does is air is continuously moving in and out of the mixture and aerating it so very similar to when you open up a bottle of red wine and you let it breathe we're doing the same thing with the cacao all of those tannins those volatiles are evaporating as air comes in and it makes the chocolate milder as the process runs and we'll let these run for about four days straight and it'll refine everything down the sugar we'd use it's unrefined has more of a molasses taste to it sweetens the chocolate but doesn't overpower it in this middle machine we're making milk chocolates we added also cane sugar a little bit of cocoa butter for texture and then we added milk powder because we can't add any sort of liquids or anything that's water-based into our mixture otherwise it's sort of like when you add water to flour it will really not work well with the molecules in the cacao and then in here we're making white chocolate the one thing we don't have is any cacao nib so this is primarily based cocoa butter unrefined cane sugar and milk powder so typically when you have milk powder it's this color I'm not a huge fan of that type of white chocolate so we like to do something near carom eyes we actually take this milk and we slowly roast it in the oven it has a nice toasty note to it which is really delicious when we take the chocolate out of the machine at that point in this covert war that's when most places would buy that finished product in order to make their items we use a filter which is actually meant for like honey and it's catching any nibs that we didn't refine and that way we have a final smooth product when you're producing tons and tons of traffic each year you have to buy from a bunch of different places and blend it together in order to sell quantity those companies want the chocolate to always taste consistently the same so when you over roast you can maintain a consistency and then you can mask it with things like vanilla so that that's always what consumers taste in big manufacturing they're typically connected via tubes and chocolate has to travel from one side of the factory to the other so they'll use a lot of times lecithin to help it run smoother from one side to the next so it's really an aid in production we don't use any of those things because you're tasting exactly what they're producing on that farm from the soil from the environment versus just eating something that's blended together that has no different notes or flavor profiles from it that chocolate will solidify and will turn from this into this over the course of a day the cocoa butter that's present in all chocolates we eat is a six phase polymorphic crystal which means at any point it can be in six different types of stages at this stage it's not in its ideal form so that's why it creates these weird color patterns if you were to bite into it it would be sandy because of that textural change it'll alter the way you experience the chocolate it won't be as pleasant but if we're going to make any sort of bars or bonbons we'll have to temper it [Music] we've melted down the chocolate to about 40 42 degrees Celsius to take out all those crystals that we don't want we're going to slowly cool down the chocolate so we're using temperature and movement to form a crystal formation that will create a chocolate that is silky to your palate this is extremely important you can make the best tasting chocolate in the world but based on that texture will not be as good as when you have a good temper so the mixing is just adding the good crystals that we just formed in that batch into the rest of the chocolate that is untempered all the molecules get into formation for my little conga line and in doing so all of the chocolate molecules are in order and look nice [Music] one of the things that's very important is how we source most farm holders live under a dollar a day it's a very difficult industry for us it's really important to support these producers who are investing time money to produce something better they should be compensated for what they're doing we're not talking about fair trade we're going above that which is direct trade and being able to pay them more than that basic commodity price so we're gonna start the process of making bonbons so this color is made out of cocoa butter which comes from the cacao bean and has a little bit of coloring in it and what we've done prior to this is tempered it in order for it to be shiny and glossy just like our chocolate has to go through that process so one of the things that makes us unique is that we're being to bond and that means that we produce all the chocolate that goes into our bonbons [Music] I actually am an organizational psychologist by training I worked as a management consultant I was in Europe in Paris and I had this amazing hot chocolate and it just seems so simple yet well made I just couldn't stop thinking about what a great thing it was and how I wanted to bring to the u.s. something similar to what I had tasted overseas so this ganache is made out of dark chocolate and then some rum and when it crystallizes we're able to do the final layer of chocolate which is the foot of the bonbon I would use a covert or to play around and see how it worked I realized it was either too sweet it just didn't focus on the cacao it was blended it was a lot of the things that just didn't seem to highlight and recreate that experience that I had had with that hot chocolate I knew I wanted to take it all the way back to the bean making a product like this that's so labor-intensive by hands it helps us control the process more from start to finish when we roast and we analyze we have more of a care up to what we're doing as opposed to just everything being fed through a machine and it takes us about a week but it takes the farmers 2 to 3 years to grow the plants six months from the time the flower comes out so the pot is ready and then from when the pod gets cut another two weeks so it's a very long process behind each bar there's a farmer and a story behind all that and we really want to make sure that we honor that we're talking years in the making to consume that final piece of chocolate that you buy and consume

Channel: Eater

Views: 6,442,326

Rating: 4.9327312 out of 5

Keywords: chocolate, chocolate making, making chocolate by hand, cocoa beans, handmade chocolate, pure chocolate, miami's best chocolate, best chocolate shops, best chocolate in miami, how to make chocolate, Exquisito Chocolates, master chocolate maker, Carolina Quijano, chocolate maker carolina quijano, eater, eater.com, food, restaurant, dining, dish, foodie, chef, foodshow, dark chocolate, making chocolate, chocolate recipe, gourmet chocolate, gourmet chocolate bars

Id: Jl0IDXkYKbk

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Boomhuck]

Just ordered the 12 assorted truffles. I’m going to make my wife watch this video and then say.... “don’t you wish we had some of these right now”. And then once I see her look of desperation, BAM! Hero!

[u/von_Barbarian]

Definitely gonna check this place out soon, it's not too far from me. I've had some good craft chocolate and it is worlds apart from the regular stuff.

[u/TherapeuticMessage]

Really cool!! Thank you for sharing

[u/missinaz]

What is the name of this store in Miami?

[u/Panthertron]

Sweet baby jesus I need this chocolate in my life

[u/autoredial]

God damn it I need chocolate

[u/salade231]

I am always disappointed when I see those amazing videos, start craving their product and then go to their website to find out they only ship in the US. I’m gonna have to take a trip to Miami then 🍫

[u/emei95]

Wow she tried out a few different careers before finding her dream job! Good on her!

[u/ExistentialTVShow]

Beautifully directed, Now I feel like I’ve been eating rubbish chocolate all my life, so thanks.