Pure Chocolate

Just a few facts:

1. Cocoa comes from the cocoa tree.
2. The cocoa tree is found in Mexico, Central and South America.
3. The cocoa beans go through an in depth process including: fermentation, drying, cleaning, roasting and the removal of their shells producing cocoa nibs. The nibs are ground which becomes pure chocolate. This can be liquified and molded.

The end product, a molded chunk of pure chocolate, is what we recently bought (although this is probably not what you usually buy!). Our local church has a team of Bolivian missionaries working in the lowlands of Bolivia. The locals there take cocoa through this process and our church is currently selling this pure chocolate for the lowland locals.

Today was my first attempt using it and I had to do the research first! I had a chocolate cake recipe I wanted to make for my language helper's birthday but I didn't have any powdered cocoa so I decided to throw in some pure chocolate. The flavor was different but the cake turned out just fine. (I tend to think the flavor is similar to coffee but Nathan disagrees and he's the coffee drinker!)

Check out Wikipedia.org for more info on chocolate!