Make Your Own Chocolate Kit

SUGAR, COCOA BUTTER, COCOA POWDER, COCOA POWDER (ALKALIZED), AND DARK CHOCOLATE (CONTAINING SUGAR, COCOA LIQUOR, COCOA LIQUOR (ALKALIZED), COCOA BUTTER, MILK FAT).

Mixing elements of chemistry with world culture and history, this delicious kit contains everything you'll need to make 8 ounces of dark chocolate. Can be made on the stove or with a microwave - adult supervision is recommended! Great for class room activities, scout troops, birthday parties, home school, or after school. Makes a great gift for kids (ages 8 & up)!

Inside each Make Your Own Chocolate Kit you'll find: organic cocoa butter, cocoa powder, confectioner's sugar, starter crystals, a temperature indicator, paper candy liners, instructions, and the story of chocolate.

All you have to do is melt the cocoa butter, add the cocoa powder and sugar. Stir, stir, stir until it cools to the right temperature; add the starter crystals so that the chocolate "tempers," and enjoy delicious home-made chocolate from scratch! By the way, you also get some cacao beans - so you can taste a few.

COOL FACT: In Latin, the name of the cacao tree is Theobroma cacao, which means "food of the gods." It really is, isn't it?

As a former teacher, I think all 3 of the Verve Make-Your-Own kits are just so cool! While learning first-hand how some of kids' favorite treats are made (I am a huge fan of the show "How It's Made:!), kids also connect to historical traditions and global economies by understanding the history as well as the economies of these products, learn how raw materials are sourced and made, and learn new cultural traditions.

But mostly, these kits are just plain fun! Even adults (like me) can get into them!

These kits would make a great classroom activity, either for connecting to particular historical/ cultural units, or for a fun holiday activity. Having a Halloween party at your house? Why not have your kids make their own candy, providing fun, entertainment, and learning all at the same time.

All of the kits take about 20-30 minutes to complete, require a stove or microwave, and of course, we strongly recommend adult supervision. Makes a great gift for kids (ages 8 & up).

Also check out these other cool kits:
Make Your Own Chewing Gum
Make Your Own Gummies

The History of Chocolate and Lucia's Story, from the Verve website:

"Lucía lives in a hot and rainy part of Costa Rica. Her parents and neighbors grow their own food to eat, and they also grow some crops to make money. In the tropics, many crops are grown on large plantations with lots of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, which can hurt other plants and animals in the area.

But here, people are tending cacao trees organically, without any chemicals, so that they can keep their forest green and productive. A healthy forest has lots of different levels, which makes it possible for many different animals and plants to live together. Cacao has an important role to play because it is an understory tree, which means that it grows in the shade of taller trees.

Lucía helps to take care of the cacao trees and harvest the pods. She breaks open the pods, and puts the beans into big, burlap bags so that they can ferment for three days. Then, she spreads the beans out onto a cloth on the ground, and lets them dry in the hot sun for a week. When the beans are ready, she goes with her father to sell them. They get paid extra because they are growing organically.

Meanwhile, far across the ocean, the cacao is made into chocolate. When we buy candy bars, part of the money goes to pay for the shipping, part for processing, the candy wrappers, the advertising, the store owner, and lots of other stuff. Lucía's family really gets only a small part of the price we pay for chocolate.

Chocolate as we know it has only become available in the last 100 years or so, even though cacao beans had been growing in Central and South America for a long time.

When the Spanish explorers came to Mexico in the 1500s, they found the Aztecs drinking "xocolatl" (pronounced "ho-ko-la-tol"), made from cacao beans, water, and sometimes, spicy peppers. Montezuma, the last king of the Aztecs, was known to have drunk 50 pitchers a day! The Spanish brought it back to Europe, but since they found it too bitter, they added vanilla and sugar. They wouldn't let anyone in Europe know how or where it grew, and guarded their secret for about 100 years, growing it on plantations in their colonies.

You have to remember that there weren't a lot of different drinks available then, as there are now. So eventually, when other people did find out about it, drinking chocolate became a very fashionable thing to do. Fancy clubs, just for drinking hot chocolate were opened.

It really didn't taste that great, however, because cacao beans are about 50% fat. Chocolate became much better when, about 150 years ago, the Dutch chemist, Conrad Van Houten, invented the chocolate press. Then people could separate cocoa butter, the fatty part of cacao, from cocoa powder, and in turn, make hot chocolate and chocolate candy, as we know it today.

Today, the huge demand for chocolate has turned cacao into an important cash crop, world wide. We hope, by including organic cacao in our Chocolate Kit, that we can help make it possible for both Lucía's family and the forest to keep flourishing."

 

STARS: 5 out of 5 stars for naturalness
COMMENTS: Glee Gum products are made with all natural ingredients including: pure cane sugar, rice syrup, natural flavorings and colorings. Their gum base has super chewy natural chicle harvested from Sapodilla trees in the rain forests of Central America.

Glee Gum products do NOT have: artificial preservatives, artificial flavors, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners (e.g. aspartame, saccharin or cyclamate).

A bit about Verve, the manufacturer of Glee Chewing Gum and the "Make Your Own Kits", from their website:

"In 1992, the concept for Verve was born when we visited an economically depressed chicle-producing community in Northern Guatemala. Up until then, we had never really thought about how chewing gum was made. When we realized its origins, we learned that prior to the synthetic resins, chicle was the basis of the entire industry. Our goal was to support chicle-harvesting by purchasing chicle.

Today, Verve provides a sustainable source of income for those communities while simultaneously offering fun, educational, and environmentally friendly activities for kids.

Verve's commitment to environmental and social justice is twofold; first, we closely monitor the environmental and social impact of our own business practices, and second, we create products and curriculum that help children think about environmental and social issues in innovative, interesting, and developmentally appropriate ways.

Our finished products are designed to help people think about where products come from, how raw materials and natural resources can be used responsibly, and how communities around the world depend upon one another to help build a healthier future."