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The Chocolate Coo

 Today was our last day in Edinburgh before we leave for a 5-day Highland Fling tour of Northern Scotland. And today we also got to do something I’ve dreamt of for a while - make our own chocolate bars!

My finished “Chocolate Coo” chocolate bar

We started off today with a 90-minute tour of The Chocolatarium, a small local chocolate factory in the city centre. Here we got to learn all about the chocolate making process and we also got to try lots and lots of chocolate samples!

Single-origin chocolate samples

Oat milk drinking chocolate

Harvesting cacao beans in the Ecuadorian rainforest

Our guide also told us about the whole chocolate making process and we got to try cracking some roasted cacao beans to eat the raw, 100% chocolate nibs inside. From the shells of the beans you can make chocolate tea, which looks like green tea but smells and tastes like a nice delicate chocolate. 

Micro chocolate factory

Roasted cacao beans
Tea from cacao bean husks

Then we got to make our own chocolate bars! Liam and I both used the 60% dark chocolate and tons of great toppings. I called my chocolate bar “The Chocolate Coo” since my mold was in the shape of a Highland Cow (or Coo as they’re called here). Liam’s mold was the Loch Ness monster, so he called it “Nessie Sighted”. 

The toppings on our chocolate bars! Including crystallized ginger, raspberry, honeycomb, mint, salt, and chilli flakes

Another fun things that we got to try was the traditional Aztec drinking chocolate. This was served cold and was considered a drink of the gods… and emperors drank around 50 cups per day of it! Traditional ingredients (that were in our drink too) were coco nibs, cinnamon, vanilla, honey, and chilli. It was quite refreshing!

Aztec drinking chocolate 

Some other interesting chocolate flavours that we tried included wild gorse flower, haggis spice, Scot’s pine, kumquat, lavender, purgatory chilli, pho spices, and carrot cake.

And of course we were so relaxed and happy after all this chocolate…but why? Well it’s probably thanks to theobromine, one of the main molecules found in chocolate (Theobroma cacao). 

Theobromine is a vasodilator and promotes relaxation and stress relief… so next time you’re stressed and want chocolate, don’t feel bad! “Theobroma” in Greek also translates to “food of the gods”… so you really can’t go wrong with chocolate. 

Don’t forget to have some chocolate today!

But we did do more things than just eat chocolate all day. After lunch we joined a free walking tour of the city! Our guide was very funny and had lots of good stories. 

One of my favourite stories was that of William Brodie, the man of two personalities. 

Brodie was a respected cabinet maker by day and a notorious robber by night. He would deliver cabinets to the rich, make wax imprints of their keys, and then later walk into their houses and steal all their goods. Eventually after many years he was caught and hanged for his crimes… ironically using the gallows he helped to design.

The famous author Robert Louis Stevenson had one of William Brodies cabinets as a child, and this two-faced man is though to be Stevenson’s inspiration for his 1886 novel “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”.

One of only two known pieces of furniture made by William Brodie; a cabinet owned by Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

One last fun fact, the national animal of Scotland is the unicorn! It represents strength, freedom, and a wild spirit. 
Unicorn!


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