Spicy Chocolate Bark, A Recipe

Today, I am overjoyed to introduce to you another new and amazing contributor to MommyMaestra. Angelica is a 12-year-old homeschooler from Texas who dreams are filled with pastries and chocolate. She has agreed to contribute to MommyMaestra once a month, thereby fulfilling her writing requirements in a fun and creative way. The photo, article, and recipe below are her own original work.

I love baking, cooking, and creating recipes with chocolate. I cannot imagine walking into the kitchen to bake and not have access to chocolate. Chocolate makes everything sweeter. Ask any kid. I have never met any kid or adult that would turn down a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie, steaming cup of hot chocolate, or chocolate covered strawberry.

We recently researched chocolate as part of my baking curriculum and what I learned really changed my outlook on this amazing ingredient. We all know of how chocolate was brought to Europe by the conquistadores. The Aztecs idolized chocolate. Chocolatl derived from the Nahuatl word Xocolatl was served during important ceremonies and was given to the soldiers to improve their stamina, helping to fight off fatigue. What I wanted to find out is how chocolate found its way into our kitchen.

Chocolatl derived from the Nahuatl word "xocolatl" made up from the words "xococ" meaning sour or bitter, and "atl" meaning water or drink. 

What I learned is that between Central Mexico and western Honduras cacao was taken to another level for cooking. At the time the only part of the cacao that was eaten was the white pulp. Not wanting to waste any part of pod, the seeds were treated as they would treat all produce. The pumpkin seeds, chiles, and extra corn left from harvest were left in the sun to dry, and then roasted on a comal to grind for cooking. A technique used for produce transformed cacao from a bitter taste to sweet paste. The heat from the sun and the roasting on the comal released the natural oil from the beans. Grinding the beans with its oil created a sweet paste that was formed into little balls to dry for later use. This development opened the window for experimenting with chocolate. Herbs, flowers, spices, and honey were added to create new flavors of chocolate. This method is still used today in Mexico.

How lucky we are to have this gift from our past. For our past to give us a wonderful treasure to enjoy daily makes me treasure chocolate even more. I wanted to share a simple recipe that highlights the flavors of that day when cacao was first laid to dry in the sun next to pumpkin seeds and chiles.

Spicy Chocolate Bark

12 ounces dark chocolate or semi sweet chocolate
¼ teaspoon cayenne
¾ teaspoon Mexican cinnamon, grated with a zester
¾ teaspoon ancho chile powder, plus more for garnish
½ cup pumpkin seeds

On a baking sheet toast pumpkin seeds at 350 degrees for 4 minutes. Cool.

Melt chocolate. Add spices and more than half of the pumpkin seeds.

Stir to incorporate the spices. Spread chocolate on wax paper. Lightly press the left over pumpkin seeds and sprinkle ancho chile for color.

Freeze for 5 minutes or until chocolate sets. Break into pieces. Serve.

Store in fridge.



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Angelica ~ A 12yr old homeschooler with dreams of becoming a pastry chef. 

Addicted to comics, food network, and carnival rides, Angelica loves taking over her mom's kitchen. She is currently working on perfecting her pie crust while her family reaps the benefits. You can find her sharing her baking skills over at Sweet Life.

Learning About Chocolate with Willy Wonka

I'm thrilled to introduce a new contributor to MommyMaestra. Latina mom and blogger, Marta Verdes Darby, knows a lot about homeschooling. She's been doing it for 10 years! And I am so happy to be able to include her stories and experience on this blog. Please welcome her... and enjoy her informative articles.

Yay! It’s Chocolate Week!

Is there anything better than celebrating chocolate?

A few years ago my son, Jonathan, was chosen to play Willy Wonka in his middle school production of Willy Wonka Jr. Because we were so busy with the business of memorizing lines, rehearsing, painting sets, and making costumes, I chose to create lessons based on the show.

We began by first watching the 1971 film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, and just treated it like we would any other form of literature.

Literature:
First, we discussed the plot as it was described in the International Movie Database:

The world is astounded when Willy Wonka, for years a recluse in his factory, announces that five lucky people will be given a tour of the factory, shown all the secrets of his amazing candy, and one will win a lifetime supply of Wonka chocolate. Nobody wants the prize more than young Charlie, but as his family is so poor that buying even one bar of chocolate is a treat, buying enough bars to find one of the five golden tickets is unlikely in the extreme. But in Movieland, magic can happen. Charlie, along with four somewhat odious other children, get the chance of a lifetime and a tour of the factory. Along the way, mild disasters befall each of the odious children, but can Charlie beat the odds and grab the brass ring?
　
Setting:

We contrasted the dirty, ordinary drabness of Charlie’s life and home with the amazing colors, smells, and general magical feel of the chocolate factory. (The beginning chocolate sequence was filmed at the Tobler Chocolate Factory in Switzerland.)
　
Characters:

Besides Charlie, there are four other kids who find golden tickets, which win them the opportunity to enter into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. So we wrote a diary entry from each character based on what we knew about how they felt about finding the golden ticket, and then getting the opportunity to go into the factory. This exercise moved us through each character’s point of view.
　
The kids are:

Charlie Bucket
Mike Teevee
Veruca Salt
Violet Beauregarde
Augustus Gloop

And let’s not forget the Oompa Loompa’s! We discussed a generally made up history for them and their plight. This, of course, is covered in Roald Dahl’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but we were focusing on what information we got from just the film.
　
Movie trivia:

Did you know the Chocolate River was made of real chocolate, water, and cream? It ended up getting very stinky fairly quickly.

Literary quotes:

Willy Wonka quotes throughout the movie were from various forms of literature:

"We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams," is from Arthur O'Shaughnessy's Ode, which also gave us the phrase, "movers and shakers."

Wonka also quotes Shakespeare and Keats.

My personal favorite, though, is "The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last," from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

Additional Activities:
　
Finally, we set up a Chocolate Bar - it works on two levels, get it? We lined up different types of chocolate bars and did a blind taste test. It turns out that Lindt chocolate was the winner by a long shot.

Spending time in Willy Wonka’s magical world was quite a wonderful experience for us as a homeschooling family. Many of our dinner conversations were spent discussing what it would be like to live in a chocolate factory and how we’d run it. And of course, that’s the beauty of educating our kids at home: There’s no on-and-off switch for when learning happens.

If you and your kids are interested in putting on your own performance of Willy Wonka Jr., check out this page on MTI Broadway Jr. Collection, which offers 30 and 60 minute shows for young performers.

Finally, here’s my 12-year-old Jonathan as Mr. Willy Wonka...

Mami cries every time.

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Marta Darby is an avid blogger, business owner, Cuban cook, graphic designer, scrapbooker, photographer and homemaker. She was born in Havana and left Cuba with her family when she was 5 years old. She likes to tell anecdotes and stories about her family (all 40 of them!), her passions (dulce de leche and red lipstick), and eecially being Cuban. She is happily married to her fabulous gringo husband, Eric, and lives with him and their four children in a tiny house with a white picket fence. You can read more from Marta on her blog, My Big Fat Cuban Family. 

Make Your Own Chocolate Kit {GIVEAWAY}

My kids and I have had the absolute best time studying about chocolate. It was hard for me to remember not to get too detailed for my kids, who are only 5 and 7 years old. But I was really pleased with the mini-unit study that I created for them.

In our exploration of the world of chocolate, we started off with the book, Smart About Chocolate: A Sweet History by Sandra Markle. This book is written for children and was perfect for my two. It covers everything from the characteristics of the cacao beans (bitterness, color, etc.) to its historical roots in Central America with engaging stories about the Maya and Aztecs. I loved how the books shared brief stories about Montezuma (Did you know he drank more than 50 cups of chocolate a day?!?), Prince Philip of Spain, and Milton Hershey.The book also discusses when - and how - milk chocolate was formed.

Smart About Chocolate also includes a fun recipe, surprising facts, a book list, and even an experiment for little scientists. The illustrations are funny and engaging and had my kids giggling from the very beginning. I totally recommend this book.

After reading this short book, we spent some time online at the Field Museum's website going through the interactives. I also used some of the activity/coloring pages on chocolate from this website (they're in English).

But the best part of our study was making chocolate ourselves. While researching my lesson online, I found a Make Your Own Chocolate Kit from Glee Gum. I purchased it from Amazon. The kit comes with the ingredients shown in the picture above. This includes organic cocoa butter, cocoa powder, confectioner's sugar, starter crystals, a temperature indicator, two cacao beans, and paper candy liners. 

The instructions were easy to follow - but you have to follow them exactly! Making chocolate is not a simple process. While we were waiting for the chocolate to cool, we nibbled on the beans and immediately spit them out complaining about the taste. I thought this was a simple, but effective way of showing how important the process is of adding the other ingredients to combat the bitterness of the bean.

They also allow time in the process for adding extra ingredients such as marshmallows, nuts, etc. We chose to add peanut butter to 1/3 of our candies. And afterwards we had a "taste test." The girls loved the peanut butter chocolate combo, while my son preferred the straight chocolate.

Not only was the kit fun and educational, it's also all-natural and eco-friendly. Although the kit comes with the story of chocolate, you can also find an educator's guide and sample lesson plan on their site.

We really had the best time doing this!

If you'd like to find a store in your area that sells this, or any of the Glee Gum kits, check their online store locator.

THE GIVEAWAY

After we had so much fun with this project, I wanted to share. So I contacted Glee Gum and asked if they'd be willing to offer a kit or two as a giveaway. They graciously agreed and are offering one Make Your Own Chocolate Kit to a MommyMaestra reader.

To enter, simply leave a comment below.

The deadline to enter is 11:59 EST, Wednesday, November 30th. The winner will be chosen using Random.org. and contacted via email - so be sure to leave a valid email address in your comment!

And to increase your chances of winning, you can:

1.) Blog about this giveaway and include the link to your post in the comments below.

2.) Follow me on Twitter and tweet the following: Win a Make Your Own Chocolate Kit from MommyMaestra! http://bit.ly/tyWqyj @LatinMami #chocolate #homeschool #giveaway

Don't forget to let me know by posting a separate comment for each entry!

By entering this giveaway, you agree to the Official Sweepstakes Rules. No purchase required. Void where prohibited.

¡Buena suerte!

Disclosure: This giveaway is offered in collaboration with Glee Gum. I have not been compensated in any way for offering this giveaway, and it results from my contacting them and asking for a contribution to our Chocolate series.

Teacher Resource for Chocolate: The Field Museum

By far, one of my favorite resources for studying chocolate is the Field Museum website. Their current exhibit, Chocolate Around the World, will be on display through January 8th, 2012. If you happen to live in Chicago, you should definitely try to swing by there, or plan a trip for your class. They still have several weekend activities planned between now and the end of the year. In fact, this Friday and Saturday (Nov 25th & 26th), artist Rebecca Moy will be painting an original chocolate masterpiece. The following weekend on Dec 3rd, Rhonda Morkes will be creating chocolate gingerbread houses, and during the last week of December, Pastry Chef Omar Martinez, from Food for Thought, will be creating a miniature version of the Field Museum - out of chocolate!

But aside from these fun events, the museum's website is full of information. The Educators' Resources area offers six lessons on the relationship between chocolate and the environment, and another six lessons between chocolate and culture for teachers to download. You can also find Fascinating Facts, Chocolate Quotations, Recipes, and Book and Movie Lists, to name a few. In the All About Chocolate section is another page with activities Just for Kids.

In addition, the site offers three interactives. Manufacturing Chocolate takes the visitor through the process of making chocolate from growing the trees to pouring them into molds. My kids love this interactive because it lets them cut the beans with a machete, pack them into bags, start the various machines and much more.

The Chocolate Challenge takes you on a journey around the world - but only by answering questions about chocolate can you advance on your journey! Again, more fun for the kids, but mine were a little too young. Best suited for children ages 9 (10?) and up.

Cacao Farm helps you discover the connections between cacao and its environment by using your virtual binoculars or microscope to study the differences between cacao farms and rain forests.

So if you're looking for a fun - but educational - distraction for the kids this holiday weekend, this website is a great place to start!

Con mucho cariño...

This Week on MommyMaestra: CHOCOLATE

As I mentioned last Friday, this entire week is going to be dedicated to the real Latin American gold: CHOCOLATE. This is actually a really rich topic (pun intended), and I'm having trouble narrowing it down to just one week, so I suspect that you will see another week of chocolatey goodness make an appearance after the New Year.

I have some awesome new contributors to MommyMaestra, who will be sharing their own experiences from time to time, and I hope you will embrace them with all the warmth and enthusiasm that you have shown me.

And now...on with the learning!

xo