Chocolate and Soap Making Workshops

Written by Sorcha

Have you ever wondered how much work goes into making us creamy delicious chocolate? Well if not you are about to find out! The first step was to harvest the cocoa pods from the cacao trees and bring them to a wooden box filled with older pods (with colour ranges of yellow, orange and purple). We cracked them open and we tasted the goo surrounding them beans. It was quite nice and sweet when we tasted it. The beans were dried and stored for a few days.

After harvesting and seeing the process of what the cocoa beans go through, we went into a room with all the things to turn the cacao seeds into chocolate. These ingredients included cows milk (that was freshly milked every morning from 5 to 7 am), cream (also made from cows milk), sugar and all the pots and pans you need to hold your dairy products. The fifth step was to crack the dried cocoa beans (take their remaining shells off). Then we put them in a saucepan and toasted them. Once they were toasted we popped them in a food grinder. Every time we put them in, we took them out, looked at them and said “no, we should put them in one more time”. Eventually the beans were ground enough to our expectations. The eighth step was to pour the ground beans back into the saucepan along with the sugar and the cream we didn’t put to much sugar in but regretted it after as it was very bitter! After adding more sugar and finally deciding it was ready we had to leave it in the fridge for a night. When we came back in the morning there was only one stage left step 10 – EATING THE CHOCOLATE!!! Fue muy bueno! (it was very good, in Spanish).

Rancho Margot Soap Workshop

The next day we were taken into a small wooden cabin where some of the Spanish schools go to learn about what they do at Rancho Margot (where we are staying for a week). Melanie and Tito two of the brilliant staff at the place took us through the steps in which to make soap the ingredient were: recycled coconut oil, sodium hydroxide and some flowers from the farm (all of these ingredients were environmentally-friendly and most of them were made on the farm) . First of all we had to collect some nice flowers including citronella, lemongrass and some other vibrant coloured plants. The next step was to rip up the exotic flowers into small bits and place them into the cup along with the sodium hydroxide and the coconut oil. We had to mix really quickly so that the mixture didn’t harden.

As you can see I’m wearing gloves because according to Melanie if we got burnt by the acid it really hurt. After combining the flowers the sodium hydroxide and the coconut oil was added to the 6cm long cup and we had to wait for two days. There was an important step we missed out because the moulds were bigger enough for the soap already but normally the farm would make great big sticks of the soap and then use a special cutter to cut them into neat slices. This is what the soap turned out like.

Why are natural soaps and shampoos better than processed, added chemical soaps and shampoos?

Here are some of the reasons. Commercial shampoos and soaps can draw moisture out of our skin and cause dryness and irritation. These chemicals affect not only our hair and hands but also throughout our bodies the shampoo and soap absorb through our skin so we’re potentially putting ourselves at risk of cancer and disease. Most commercial shampoos on the market include a range of synthetic ingredients like processed chemicals. Also one of the main environmental issues that we are facing at the moment, is water pollution. One of the polluters in our water system, is our use of shampoos and soaps with chemicals in them, to wash our hair and bodies. The water eventually goes back into the ocean which affects marine lifestyle like all types of underwater species from tiny fish eggs to huge great white sharks. At Rancho Margot, they asked us to only use natural soaps when we showered. This blog is meant to urge people to use natural non-chemical friendly shampoo and soap.