By Heather Nicholds
There’s lots of locally produced chocolate in the market and in stores here in Cusco. Then there’s this chocolate museum, which sounded like a fun place to check out.
Peru has become a huge producer of chocolate on the worldwide market, and I learned a lot of interesting tidbits about chocolate – its original uses by the Mayans, its commercial production and how it grows.
There was also tons of information on the nutritional benefits of chocolate, which are many. Pure dark chocolate has lots of iron, magnesium and antioxidants.
One thing they had posted in the museum is that chocolate doesn’t have any caffeine, only theobromine which is a similar chemical structure but not as strong a stimulant.
I knew chocolate had theobromine, but I was pretty sure it also had caffeine. I looked up the nutritional info after, and the USDA database shows that it does have a small amount of caffeine in addition to the theobromine.
Either way – it’s not a lot of caffeine, but just wanted to clarify that since I mentioned in the video that I wasn’t sure.
I know I use carob rather than cocoa in a lot of my recipes, but I do love chocolate as well. I think of them as totally different things, although I do also like mixing them together…
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On our way out, we wanted to get a chocolate bar because there’s no admission to the museum, I think they just count on people to buy stuff. It was hard to choose a flavor!
They had plain, with almonds, with coca powder (the green kind, not the drug), with coconut, with chili peppers, with coffee beans, with cinnamon… We finally settled on one with cocoa beans.
What’s your favorite kind of chocolate? Let me know below. Mine is super super dark – 80% or more. I like flavors in it sometimes, like ginger or cinnamon, or sometimes almonds – but I also just like it pure 🙂
