Well hello there!

Last month, I was traveling in Belgium. We spent a couple of days in Brugge, which is known for it’s breweries, chocolates, needlework, and more recently being in a movie.

When traveling, my wife and I love to just get lost in the city and discover what it has to offer. We normally stay away from tourist traps, unless we absolutely have to. Surprisingly, we both decided that going to the Chocolate museum was a good idea…

Now I have grown up with chocolate. I grew up in Switzerland (“the” or “the other” land of chocolate), and even experienced a chocolate factory tour when I was a kid. All I really remember from that tour was the smells, and the size of the infrastructure (which you need if you are going to do industrial scale production of chocolate).

The Brugge Chocolate Museum was interesting because it not only explained the history of how chocolate made its way to Europe, but also the process for making chocolate. As a geek, I found this fascinating! Basically you start with simple ingredients (cacao bean, sugar, lecithin), separate and recombine the cacao in different proportions, and add the sugar and lecithin to it. That seemingly simple formula provides a lot of opportunities for experimentation and testing. Additionally, given that you need to form the chocolate into something, there is the opportunity to experiment with creating molds with a 3-D printer… My inner geek was in heaven!

So I started reading about chocolate making, and the process. Quickly I found that the equipment can be quite costly, but decided to move forward with a small experiment. I’ll start simple, and go from there. This blog is meant to capture this story, and share with those who find it, a little more about my successes and failures.

Onward!