The Castle Home: Museu de la Xocolata

February 26, 2014 - This is the only museum Gabby agreed to go to because her mantra is 'I hate museums'. She took only about five minutes to walk through to the end only to call me and ask me where I was... still near the entrance. Lucky for Gabby it is a small museum, depending on how much of the signage you read, the museum takes about an hour to go through.

Museu de la Xololata, Comerc 36, Barcelona, +34 93 268 78 78 www.museuxocolata.cat
Admission - 5 euros for all, under 7 years - free
Open - Monday-Saturday 10am-7pm, Sundays 10am-3pm

Displays cover history, plantations and process, culture, art and advertising, pastry, a few videos, machinery and many chocolate sculptures... some a bit past their prime (cracked, pieces fallen off, dusty).

What looks very cool is the pastry school attached to the museum... something to come back for?!

A brief history - chocolate, from cacao...

began as an exotic food for the upper class only, of course
cacao beans were also used as currency for trading
the cacao tree, originally from the Amazon, likes a tropical climate (76-86F degrees)
cacao was first shipped from Mexico to Spain in 1520 by a Cistercian monk to a monastery in Aragon
the French are credited with creating bonbons in the 18th century. French court ladies would carry chocolate bonbons in boxes so they could enjoy chocolate any time. Hence the evolution of giving a box of chocolates for an occasion or a thoughtful gesture!
classified by the Swedish naturalist Carl Lineus as Theobroma cacao (the god's food). Perfect, always wondered who Carl Lineus was since at least one street and a cafe are named after him in Stockholm. Really can't get very far without running into a Swede!
cocao beans first go through a fermentation process, wrapped in banana tree leaves, then dried, cleaned, sorted and classified
for processing, beans are roasted making the shells inflate and explode
next the beans are cut into pieces, and shells eliminated, this process is called triturating
grinding releases the cacao butter making the cacao paste
the paste can be mixed with sugar, vanilla, spices, milk, fruit or nuts to create a variety of chocolate
cacao powder is created when the paste is dried and finely ground
cacao was originally mixed with spices and consumed. The upper class of Europe found the taste too strong so it was reinvented by mixing in sugar, vanilla and cinnamon creating the type of chocolate we know today
in the 19th century cacao was highly taxed in northern Europe so as not to take away from coffee and tea consumption
Catholic southern European countries declared the nutritional content of chocolate adequate for fasting days. Hey, you can justify anything if you need to!
Barcelona becomes the first to mechanically produce chocolate in 1777
by the end of the 19th century France and Switzerland got into industrial manufacturing
powdered cacao was made into tablets for distribution to be mixed with milk or dried fruit for breakfast or snacks

sweet, real chocolate tickets!

metate (mealing stone) - granite or volcanic stone mortar

cocoa bean roaster

dragee machine/chocolate coating sphere

mechanical stone mortar

refiner/conche - conching affects the taste, smell and texture of chocolate. The length of the process determines the final smoothness and quality of the chocolate.