A French couple from Auroville is here to show you how chocolate moves from bean to bar at an intimate masterclass
The workshop will be conducted by husband-wife team Jane (left) and Fabien Mason
If you sneakily snack on that bar of decadent dark chocolate after dinner, or like to savour a mug of steaming hot chocolate on a nippy winter night, a bean-to-bar chocolate workshop is probably for you.
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Auroville-based Jane and Fabien Mason, founders of the gourmet organic chocolate brand Mason & Co will conduct the workshop, which is being held in Mumbai for the first time.
Bean me up
"Usually, we hold chocolate tasting sessions; this is the first time we’re conducting a bean-to-bar workshop. We’ll show you how chocolate is made, right from its birth as a raw cacao bean to its final form as a bar of chocolate," says Jane, who moved to India from Bali six years ago and decided to make her own chocolate after finding that being vegan, she couldn’t try the ones available in markets here.
She, along with Fabien, will bring this knowledge to the workshop where, over four hours, participants will be taught about the different varieties of cacao beans, the various methods of making fine chocolate, as well as a peek into the popular varieties of chocolate available in the market today.
"Typically, it takes four to seven days for us to go from bean to bar at our factory. However, since the session is only four hours long, we won’t be able to go through the entire process. It’s an introductory class for chocolate lovers, bakers, or just anyone interested in learning the secret behind making quality chocolate," she adds.
One of the perks of joining the class is that you get to taste chocolate from different regions in India and some of the rarest and most prized cacao beans from the world. Apart from this, you will also learn the art of roasting, cracking, winnowing, and grinding the beans, and get to try your hand at tempering, flavouring and, finally, moulding chocolate to make your own personalised bar.
Farm fresh
Explaining the kind of work that goes into creating good chocolate, she says, "We source our beans from farms in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and even from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. It is important to interact with the cacao farmers. We teach the farmers who supply to us the right method to process the beans. The way the beans are roasted, too, makes a difference to the final outcome. It develops flavour and creates character."
She shares that although their network is now larger, getting to this point was a struggle. "The first farmer we starting working with didn’t have the quality of beans we were looking for. It took us a year of working with him to get to a point where we were satisfied," she adds.
According to figures published by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, India is the second-largest producer of cacao in Southeast Asia. Yet, its chocolate isn’t as well known as chocolate from, say, South America or Africa. "This is because India is considered a bulk chocolate producer, and anything that is produced in bulk is perceived to be of a lower quality. This needs to change."
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