Our last unit of the year was on Chocolate. Daisy remembers the last time we did this unit (you can find lots of resources linked there) and has been begging to do another one ever since! Since she is planning to go into "the industry" (hee hee), she feels she needs to know these things—and she's probably right! So we did a very in-depth dive into the history, creation, and science of chocolate!
Chocolate Unit Pinterest Board (from last time)
We found another way to tie Macaws into our year. Can you blame us? Gus just loves them so much! Anyway, they live in the rainforest, and chocolate grows in the rainforest, so…it makes perfect sense. Here are some videos we liked about macaws:
A history of chocolate documentary
Lesson plan about the Aztec and Maya using chocolate—we used the Aztec chocolate recipe in this lesson
We looked at this Aztec-style recipe too
The Lindt company invented conching, which is the process that makes chocolate today so smooth and creamy. Here's some information about it.
Making "artisan" or "bean to bar" chocolate is trendy right now. That means a lot of fancy $10 chocolate bars at the grocery store, but it also means there is TON of information about chocolate-making online. Lots of great videos and resources. One of the most comprehensive sites is this "Chocolate Alchemy" site, which has how-to videos of every step.
Most of the small-batch chocolate makers I found online (including my friend Tye, whose house we visited for a field trip) use a melanger to make their chocolate smooth and creamy. The big companies still use what they call conching, but it seemed to me the process of melanging and conching were the same thing. Here is a site I found that explains the nuanced difference between the two, for anyone that cares (likely NO ONE).
We really liked all these "Kitchen Matters" videos about chocolate chemistry. The explanations of tempering were some of the clearest we found anywhere, and it was interesting to learn about the chemical processes connected with that. Here is crystal structures of chocolate (basically all commercial chocolate today has cocoa butter in the Phase V stage, and it's the most pleasing and best phrase for eating). Here is the science of tempering chocolate. And here is how to fix seized chocolate.
Difference between theobromine and caffeine (and why chocolate doesn't have "just as much caffeine as coffee" as people sometimes claim)
Different chocolate regulations in different countries (explains why European and even Canadian chocolate is so good)
Funny Rittersport ad campaign
And another one
Learning about emulsifiers was really interesting! (More about emulsifiers)
Some "how chocolate is made" videos—
Every step of of making chocolate
Making cocoa butter
This guy made chocolate from scratch
A guide to tempering chocolate
I bought a bunch of chocolate bars (some of the aforementioned fancy $10 variety, so this got expensive quickly and I had to put some back! goodness!) for us to taste and try. The stars aligned that everyone, even Abe and Seb, were home that day, so everyone got to participate in the activity and it was so much fun! We wrote our observations down and tried to be scientific about it, but mostly it was just so fun to try so many different iterations of the same thing! And all the different percentages and types of beans and origins really do make such a difference!
Here is the last time our family did a chocolate tasting: https://nielsonschool.blogspot.com/2014/05/chocolate-tasting-activity.html
And here are some of our notes, for posterity (in case we ever need to remember which chocolate to buy…but you can never go wrong with just RitterSport) :)
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