While everyone else is freaking out about their Pumpkin Spice Latte, a chocolatier in Antigua, Guatemala is using ancient Mayan techniques to produce a super rich hot chocolate. Some drinks take longer than a few minutes to make. And are well worth the wait.
The process takes four days to make and involves grinding roasted cacao beans on a traditional grinding stone called a metate. The technique is more than 3,000 years old. Originally, the cacao bean was used to make a ceremonial beverage. According to National Geographic:
The beans were roasted, ground, and brewed into a bitter hot chocolate drink that was used in religious ceremonies, buried in the tombs of dignitaries, and used to worship Ek Chuah, the Maya god of merchants and patron of cacao.
And as Mental Floss notes, the process still requires a ton of patience to make:
Once turned into 4-ounce chunks, the chocolate is cut into tablets on a special plant-based mat called a petate and divided in fourths, which can then be added into 90°F water. The temperature has to be just right to melt the chocolate to create a delicious Guatemalan hot chocolate.
The artisans at Chocolate D’ Taza, a fourth generation family business, add a mix of cinnamon, cardamom, and sugar to their chocolate.
National Geographic has the whole story:
