One of my favorite activities in Guatemala was making chocolate! On my first day in Antigua, I visited the Choco Museo and did their “Bean to Bar” Workshop. This is a 2 hour class that is offered at various times throughout the day and is a lot of fun for all ages!
A traditional Mayan grinding stand, with actual chocolate being ground into Cacao Liquor.
They first walk you through the museum. While the museum is free, I got a lot more out of it and the hands on displays while the teacher explained things in more detail. After learning about the history of chocolate and how it is harvested you will jump into working with cacao beans.
Cacao Beans being roasted.
You’ll get a chance to roast and then winnow the beans to separate the “nibs” from the shells. After this step you’ll learn to make cacao tea. This is done using she shells, hot water, and some cacao nibs. I surprisingly really liked this drink! Enough so that I was sad I didn’t buy some cacao beans from the gift shop! But thank goodness for the “raw foods” movement. You can now buy cacao beans online to make your own cacao tea!
Cacao Nibs in the foreground, in the background the Cacao Shells.
Next you will be given the opportunity to grind the cacao nibs. If you grind hard enough you’ll see it start to turn slick. This is the cacao “liquor”. If you took this mixture into a press you could separate the bean into chocolate powder and chocolate butter. At this time in the workshop you’ll learn how to make Kakawa, or Mayan Hot Chocolate. This is a bit more spicy drink than most people are use to. While I didn’t like the taste as much, it was fun to see the teacher mix by pouring from one container to another, from greater heights each time!
Mayan Hot Chocolate!
Afterwards you’ll be given a little history lesson on how chocolate came to Europe before learning how to make European Hot Chocolate. This is more milky than I expected but still nice! I did enjoy the traditional song they taught us as we frothed the hot chocolate to get the right consistency.
Early European Hot Chocolate
Finally you are given a technical demo on refining and tempering chocolate by one of the chocolate masters at the museum. And then you get to make your own chocolate bars! This is fun, as you can make dark or milk chocolate, add in whatever spices, toppings, and other ingredients that you wish. I chose to make a bunch of smaller bite sized chocolates in various molds.
Making your own chocolate candies!
But one thing to keep in mind is that the chocolate bars needs time to set, at least 45 minutes. This is the end of the class, so I recommend going out for lunch or a nice walk to explore the city more before you go back to retrieve your creations.
As I said this was one of my favorite activities that I did in Guatemala. It was hands on and informative but beyond that the teacher was amazing and we all had great fun!
If you go:
It is located 1.5 blocks off the central square, it’s hard to miss!
The price for the Beans to Bar workshop is 180 Q or about $24 USD.
Times of the class vary, check the schedule before you go.
Workshops are in English and/or Spanish, the teachers are bilingual.
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