Iam the secret ingredient that fixes every bad day. Dearly loved by humans, I never fail to bring a smile on anyone’s face. Although I am a simple food, there’s no denying that my taste can solve complicated problems with just one bite.

Yes, you guessed it right. I am your sweetest friend — chocolate. And here I am taking you on my journey from being a wild cocoa bean to a sweet bar. So are you ready?

My journey, like yours, my friend, is not quite an easy one. In the tropical and humid climate, I was born on the cacao tree, which resembles my distant relative blackthorn bush. Amidst the green ambience, I am brown in colour, spreading the surrounding with the rich aroma.

From my fruit, which is called pod, I grow directly from the tree’s trunk. Each pod is like a family to me, containing 20 to 60 of my siblings. Inside the pod, it’s dark and my siblings keep scaring me by making weird noises. And when I am about to cry, my sister tells me jokes and I soon forget all sadness and scariness.

A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands

“My mum told me to follow my dreams so I went back to the bed!” she said. I hysterically started to laugh at her silly joke.

When the sun rises, some light enters our pod, which brings smiles on our tiny faces. All of us start to sing loudly and play games. A monotonous week passes with us playing in the day and sleeping at night. Until one day, my little brother has a tantrum and he pushes me. I fall at the wall of the pod so hard that it almost brakes. But soon he realises his mistake and apologises to me. Forgiving him, we embrace each other tightly and became happy siblings once again.

Then I hear some noises from outside. A farmer picks our pods and gathers us in a large red coloured basket. After harvesting more pods, the farmer opens the pods and removes the seeds, which makes me ready for the next step, that is fermentation

First, the beans and pulp are laid in fermentation boxes. This process of fermentation produces heat, which requires the beans to be stirred. At the end of the five-day fermentation process, the beans turn brown, bitterness ebbs away and a rich flavour develops.

After fermentation, the beans still contain too much water, so they are spread out under the sun to dry. Well, honestly, I enjoy the laying under the sun.

So from here, I, along with my other fellow beans, enter a new journey of our life with the drying process and the farmer hands us over to a professional chocolate maker to bring out the richness of the flavour we carry. After drying, the chocolate maker roasts the beans at 210°F for around 10-15 minutes. Roasting sterilises us, enhances our flavour and makes the next step much easier.

This is followed by winnowing, the most vital part of my journey towards becoming a chocolate, which exposes the very best part of my initial bean stage. During this process, the chocolate maker removes the outer shells, revealing the nib of the cocoa beans — the most desirable part of me.

By machinery or in between heavy stones, the nibs are then ground, resulting in the formation of a magic potion in which sugar is added to give it a new title of ‘cocoa liquor’. A change in my state from solid to liquid, leads to the next step of producing a primal version of molten chocolate.

Sometimes, instead of grinding, many makers go for the technique of conching, the process of mixing the cocoa mass (undeveloped chocolate). This technique dries the beans (in case bits of moisture still remain), develops flavour and crush the large pieces (if any). This can take from hours to days, depending on the desired outcome. Five days are required for the finest chocolates.

Now, after all this, to make me regain my final solid state, the next step is tempering. During tempering, the chocolate produced in the previous step is heated and then allowed to cool slowly on its own. This helps the cocoa mass to stabilise and solidify properly.

Finally, after all these steps that require rigorous work, you have your favourite chocolate bar in your hands and you can now enjoy this healthy salad.

Salad? How can chocolate be salad? Well, chocolate comes from cocoa, which comes from trees, which is a plant — therefore chocolate is a salad!

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 19th, 2022