While reading out-loud in our IXL reading groups, we had a book on how to make chocolate. The weekly books are often inspiring and we learn a lot. One book caused us to want an octopus, until we found out they have a very short life. Anyway, after reading the book about chocolate I decided to look into it. I ordered both cocoa seeds and processed seeds call “Nips.” Nips are the shelled seed after a 10-day fermentation period and have a very strong chocolate taste. They are also consumed as a superfood.

At first I thought we would grind them into cocoa powder in my electric flour mill until I realized that Nips are partially cocoa butter! What a mistake that would have been trying to clean and un-gum the machine. Finally, I found a solution to grinding. A mortar and pestle would be the answer. We ordered one and after some shipping issues it arrived and we eagerly began our journey to make chocolate. At first it was a lot of fun! But, it slowly turned to work! We took our turns grinding the Nips and turned the crunchy Nips into a moist flour like material that was tasty when powdered sugar was added.

Now all we needed was extra cocoa butter to make our heavy damp powder into a syrup. After an unsuccessful hour at Walmart, engaging the whole Pick & Save staff for 45 minutes with another unsuccessful search, we finally found the rare butter at Woodmans.

The chocolate was added to the chunky wax-like cocoa butter and heated. After some melting and stirring, the dark liquid was poured into molds to set-up. Several hours later or over-night, the magic was complete! Eating the well-earned chocolate, produced more incentive to grind more Nips for the next batch. What’s next? Can you say cheese!

Rick Blumenschein, Grade 1-4 Teacher at Petersen Adventist School