Chocolate in Oaxaca

Posted on by greenbee

I stayed in an AirBnB with a woman named Gisela’s parents, Soledad (Sol) and Rene, hosting. There was one young Chinese man, named Martian, who was traveling the world while working remotely, also staying there.

Oaxaca is famous for hot chocolate. When I visited more than 20 years ago, it was always served with water and hardly sweet. It was more like coffee, in a way. These days, it’s more often served with milk and more sugar, I guess due to tourists affecting cafe offerings.

I had asked several Oaxacans where they bought chocolate for their families and they all said they had it milled fresh at Mayordomo and brought it home to shape and dry.

Sol was kind enough to lend me a frame for shaping and drying. She explained the process but she and Rene were going to be out, so luckily she also mentioned I could just roll the chocolate into small balls and flatten into medallions, because my chocolate was very damp and the little frame would never have let me dry enough before departing the next day.

Measuring cacao nubs, cinnamon, almonds and sugar, though at first he said something was up with one mill.
The first grinding, then he transferred for a second round to the adjacent mill.
They put the warm viscous mixture in a plastic bag.
This is the mold. The other side has finer divisions. The mixture needed additional mixing and I wondered if that was normal—some areas of dry sugar, some areas much moister.
These are the medallions I end up rolling and pressing so all the chocolate would dry in time for my flight the next day. Once home, I put in a glass jar (you can just see the distortion around the edge). They are about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2” wide and will make a small mug of hot cocoa, traditionally blended with a wooden whisk.

Well, I do NOT recommend drying freshly ground chocolate mix where you hope to sleep. The volatile oils were overwhelming! I feared I wouldn’t want to drink it…

If you are ever in an area where cacao grows, I do recommend trying the fresh pulp that surrounds the seeds in the fruit—delicious!! It’s not grown in Oaxaca but I was lucky to have tried it long ago in Belize.

You can purchase Mexican style chocolate at most grocery stores. The one I’ve had is called Abuelita’s (Grandma’s), but it’s not quite the same. Maybe almonds are missing?

This was on the terrace at Gisela’s, which had a beautiful view of a cathedral with a flock of pigeons.

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