Ah Trini Travelogue Trinidad & Tobago's most travelled blogger through 99 countries. Create and Re-Engineer your life for travel.
On the list of activities to do in Antigua, the ChocoMuseo is usually a hit with the kids and the foodies alike. Basically, it’s two hours of talk and discussion about chocolate. The guides in their very decent English (The standard to English at the center ranges from decent to very good – so no fear of not understanding something). They go through the history of chocolate (and I actually learned one or two things), how it goes from bean to bar, and you get to make chocolate yourselves.
We ended up doing the 1:30pm class (They offer three classes a day – I would avoid the classes on days where cruise ships come into town and I would find out the number of reservation – our group was 15, which wasn’t completely enjoyable to me – but we had a mix of Israeli students, an American couple and a Finnish couple – so that made the high numbers a bit better to tolerate).
When you get past the chocolate history and chat, you do get into the chocolate. There is a lot of chocolate business going around there … you get to grind the beans, make two types of chocolate drink, play with chocolate ganache and then finally make your own chocolate!
After two hours in the store, I gathered the following steps
Hulk Smash and Strip- We were given cacao beans in their shells to separate.
Ground & Pound – We then took the beans and pulverized them into paste. There was a first prize for the fastest past. See the video – I obviously didn’t pound the alarm
Chug! Chug! Chug! We drank two kinds of chocolate stuff: 1. Dark, very water-like and incredibly bitter. Lots of honey was poured in this. 2. A lighter, sweeter beverage. I would have enjoyed a thicker beverage.
Customize our Chocolate- YUM! We were given bowls of chocolate and about a dozen possible ingredients. You can anything you want with the chocolate.
After the ground & pound, the making your custom chocolate was pretty cool.
You’re given a number of molds to shape the liquid ganache, along with tons of yummy treats to put on your chocolate (orange peel, almonds, macademias, peanuts etc). I ended up making chocolate lollipops … no points for style or impression …obviously!
Overall, the instructors was knowledgeable, accommodating and friendly! Pablo really enjoys what he does. For a couple hours of fun with your own group, this is 150Q (20$ USD) well spent and definitely something I would recommend, if you like playing with chocolate.
BTW : If you’re looking for waaayyy more information/scandal or analysis on chocolate … you can hit this link …. it’s a lot to wade through, especially with the claim of fraud in the process … I’m just concerned with a cool activity, but completeness makes me put this link in … so at least no one can claim I’m shilling for this service in my ChocoMuseo Review
