Last weekend, Jane and Fabien were in Mumbai hosting two intimate and engaging Bean-To-Bar Chocolate Workshops at Magazine Street Kitchen. Apart from being an ideal venue to host private dinners and events, the location is also a state-of-the-art production kitchen with all the equipment and space we needed to conduct every complex and unique process to make Bean-To-Bar Chocolate. A huge thanks to the amazing team at Mag St. for all their support and the talented Natasha Mulhall for the photos! We plan to conduct more of these workshops in the coming months and hope to bring them to different cities in India; if you are interested in attending, please email info@masonchocolate.com and you will be the first to know when we plan the next one!
For more pictures, check out our Facebook and Instagram or our photographer Natasha Mulhall’s Facebook and Instagram!
Heres a more in-depth look at what happened at the workshops:
Cacao pods shipped fresh from Kerala! And some un-roasted beans to sample.
The Cut Test. All cacao beans were not created equal, we cut open a variety of beans to analyse the quality of the post harvesting process conducted by our farmers.
A Quick Guide to Chocolate Tasting. Everyone got to try different kinds of chocolate made by us – from low and high roasts to differently fermented beans as well as chocolate made with beans from Vietnam and Bolivia!
The Art of Roasting. We roasted a batch of raw beans on site to show the different ways to bring out flavour.
Cracking and Winnowing. We brought our customised hand cracker and our small-scale winnowing machine, everyone got a chance to crack open some beans and remove the shells through the winnowing process.
Temper Temper Temper. Fabien demonstrating the tabliering method of tempering in the cold room at Mag St., we also explored the seeding method of tempering.
Grinding to Perfection. We started grinding a batch of nibs at the beginning of the workshop and reviewed the grind at different points in the day.
Fabien measuring the particle size of the ground chocolate.
Moulding. Everyone got to mould and flavour 3 bars of chocolate to take home. Delicious!
Flavouring. We brought along a bunch of delicious toppings for everyone to add to their bars – the most popular topping being the rare, organic hazelnuts from the Himalayas!
Jane checking to see if the chocolate has cooled and set, these bars are almost ready to be packed!
We designed custom and personalised packaging for everyone to wrap their bars. A big thank you to everyone who came to the workshop and to the team at Magazine Street Kitchen for all their support!