Pointers to things one can do with cocoa beans wanted
 

Hi,
ever since I have seen the film Chocolat I felt like trying some
things with Cocoa beans.
I finally found a source that has raw and roasted beans.
What next?

As to finding the right information with google, I typically end up
with way too much about chocolate, but not about what to do with beans,
so if you have some keywords/pointers for me that
make searching bearable I'd be more than happy.

I assume it is probably easier to work with the roasted beans, or is it like
with coffee, that they get stale quickly after roasting?

I am interested in hot chocolate with chilli (what chilli, which proportions?),
mixing with espresso beans in an
espresso machine (was mentioned on alt.coffee) and other fun
things to do with them (icecream?). I guess I will not attempt to make chocolate,
that seems to be a bit out of my league in terms of effort and machinery required.

thx
afx

Pointers to things one can do with cocoa beans wanted
 

Andreas Siegert wrote:

> ever since I have seen the film Chocolat I felt like trying some
> things with Cocoa beans.
> I finally found a source that has raw and roasted beans.
> What next?

They're called cacao beans, not cocoa. They become
cocoa nibs after being roasted and broken. When the
cocoa nibs are ground, they become cocoa powder.

The unroasted beans are not really raw. They've been
fermented and dried. The fermentation process is
essential to developing the chocolate flavor. Fermented
beans are a deep purplish brown. Unfermented beans
are almost white, like a cashew.