Chocolate is a great treat, and it can vary in quality and taste, but why would you be limited to what someone else makes, when you can make your own chocolate, and control the taste and hardness yourself!

1. Choose the cocoa beans. There are 4 main types of cocoa, and many hybrid ones. They determine the taste.
2. Roast the beans. They are to be roasted in an oven for 5 to 35 minutes at 120 to 160 degrees C or 250 to 325 degrees F. Start with a high temperature and lower it gradually. You should roast them until they start cracking, and before they start to burn.
3. Crack the beans and remove the husk. You can use a hammer to crack them and blow the husks away with a hairdryer while stirring the cocoa beans.
4. Grind the beans into liquid. You will need a high powered juicer, a Champion Juicer for instance. You will not be able to use hand grinders for coffee, meat or anything else.
5. Refine and conch your chocolate. Add milk, cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin into your chocolate. Conching makes it better in texture and taste, while refining reduces the size of sugar crystals and cocoa parts. You need a machine that agitates and folds for many hours.
6. Temper the chocolate. The most difficult step of making chocolate which makes it hard and shiny, it involves getting a third of the chocolate onto a non porous surface and spreading it around with a spatula until it cools down from 110 degrees F to 85 degrees F, at which point the mass should be returned to the bowl and stirred carefully until it reaches 90 degrees F.
7. Mold the chocolate. Pour the chocolate into the molds.
8. Remove the chocolate from the mold, and temper again if it is too hot.

This is how to make chocolate from cocoa beans, milk and sugar. You should take care to maintain the temperature every step requires. If you make a mistake in tempering, the chocolate will loose texture and become whitish, but will still taste the same. You should take care not to get any water in the chocolate while tempering. And you should enjoy in making and eating your chocolate!

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