 Hi everybody, my name is Sheridan Casares and we're super excited that you joined us for our Club de Recetas, the Chocolate Edition, as part of our Vida Latina series here at the Long Beach Public Library. Our Vida Latina series is going to run from September 15th to October 15th and we're going to be doing virtual programming that's going to showcase Latin American culture, art, food, stories and also a couple of team workshops as well. So we're super excited for you to be here. All the programs are going to be streamed live or live-ish on Facebook every Tuesday at 4 p.m. for more the more grown-up crowd and every Saturday at 1 p.m. for the kids. So let's get right into it. Cynthia here's going to talk about chocolate history. I'm going to share with you a little about where chocolate comes from. So chocolate as we know it comes from the cacao seeds, the cocoa beans. These actually grow in a cacao pod in the cacao tree. The cacao pods are fruit that kind of looks like the size of a nerf, a nerf ball, the size and shape of a nerf ball. These are dried, they're fermented, and then they're ground and mixed with milk and sugar to make the milk chocolate that we know today. But we didn't always eat chocolate the way that we eat it now. Originally we thought that chocolate came from Mesoamerica, which is Central America and like the south of Mexico area, but there is new evidence that shows that chocolate actually came from the Amazon area in South America. And we don't know much about how they used to back then, but we do know that they did have it as a drink because they have found evidence of cacao in their pods. So it is believed that they brought it up north eventually and that the Olmecs adopted it into their culture. The Olmecs didn't really eat chocolate the way we do now. To them it was more of a religious ritual and they used it for medicinal reasons. The Olmecs called chocolate the cacao seeds cacao. So that's where the term cacao comes from. And eventually they taught what they knew to the Maya that used it in their culture as well. The Maya drank the cacao as a frothy spicy drink and actually the word chocoato means bitter water. So it was more of a bitter spicy drink. And also they did not drink it as an everyday. It was more of a ceremonial ritual and only the elites got to drink it. The Aztecs on the other hand also used cacao, but they it was more of an everyday drink. Well it was also a celebratory drink, but everybody got to drink it, not just the elites. It was also very valuable to them and they used cacao seeds as money. And one cacao bean actually bought them one tomato and I believe it was 20 cacao beans would buy them a rabbit. So they had value and they actually counterfeited these so they would empty it out and they would fill it with sand and they would sell them as counterfeits. So they were very very valuable but they were a little more common than the Maya and the Olmecs that only used it for ceremonies and for special rituals. And now Sheridan is going to tell us a little bit about how we use chocolate today. We don't drink it as a bitter frothy drink anymore. Now it's a sweet snack so he's going to tell us a little bit more about how we still use it in our cuisine. Yeah so chocolate chocolate is still foundational in a lot of the different foods that we have in Latin America and also here in the States. So some of the stuff that ends up happening with chocolate is that we try to make it into sweet treats obviously. So you have your regular candy bars, you have Carlos Quinto which is super popular in Latin America but over here we have Hershey's and stuff like that. Oftentimes it's for hot chocolate. We have companies like Ibarra or Abuelitas who add sugar and other flavorings to it like cinnamon and stuff to make it into like a hot chocolate drink. It comes in powdered form. It also comes in the tablets which we'll show you how to use later. And then it also comes as sort of like Choco Mil which is a really popular drink in childhood and beyond for me included. And then it's also used in Atole. We have chocolate flavored Atole which is a drink made from corn and it's typically drank on like cold days or you know for breakfast and that kind of stuff. Some of the more savory stuff that we've got going on or actually before I move on to the savory stuff. There's a company called Choco Melher that does like a sort of meltable chocolate for dipping and so we'll show you how to use this later in just a minute. Some of the more savory stuff that we've got going on is what you guys probably have heard of as mole. So mole is a sauce that's made from a paste or a sauce that's made from a chocolate base but it also has other like tons of other spices and chiles in it to be able to here you can see it as a paste and what you end up doing is you mix it with either chicken broth or other stuff to be able to make it into more of a sauce that you would then put on chicken or other meats. Another variety that's really popular is the Doña Maria variety. This one comes a little bit more hydrated and it's actually got some oil suspended in there and so you can use this to make some easy easy mole at home because the process for making mole from scratch is incredibly tedious and really really long. We also use it in baking so as you can see everybody knows about the chocolate conchas. These are bread that's sweetened along with a sort of confection that includes chocolate that is then layered on top to be able to make a shell pattern. Super super famous and iconic bread in Latin America. And then I want to share with you a little bit about some of the politics of chocolate too in the modern day. So chocolate cocoa tends to be harvested in countries that have weaker labor laws and so oftentimes some recent exposés have come out where they found that cocoa was being harvested by child labor or even slave labor. A lot of you know aside from the labor practices because the cocoa plant is so susceptible to disease and to pests oftentimes they end up having to use a ton of pesticides in order to be able to farm it and so that has its own environmental consequences. So if you can try to stick to chocolate that's fair trade and that avoids companies that use you know immoral labor practices and damaging environmental practices. And I wanted to share that we do have lots of books in the library where you can learn some recipes about how to cook chocolate. There's also some good ones about the history of food that talk about how chocolate has influenced the foods all over the world. How you know it was brought into Europe and transformed into like a really popular meal. So there's some really good books that we recommend that you check out to learn a little bit more about chocolate and about chocolate recipes. And now we're going to show you how to make a couple of different snacks using some of the products that we have here. So join us as Evelyn shows us how to make some choco bananas and some Mexican hot chocolate. And now Evelyn is going to show us how to make a couple of different treats with chocolate. The first one we're going to make is the choco banana. This is a Central American treat that is made with two ingredients bananas and chocolate. So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to freeze the bananas overnight. And then when you're ready to make the choco bananas you're gonna melt the chocolate the packet of chocolate in a double boiler. So you're gonna boil the water you add the package to the water until it melts. Once it's melted you pour it into a jar where you can that's big enough for you to stick the bananas in. So we have the melted chocolate here and Evelyn is gonna dip the banana into the chocolate. You let the excess chocolate drip off and that's it. Once it cools off it'll harden. If you want to add any peanuts or any coconuts or sprinkles you can do that as well. What you would do is you dip the banana in and before the chocolate cools off you want to roll it in peanuts or in sprinkles and we made a sample with sprinkles to show you how that would look. So these are very easy to make and they're great summer treat. Now we're going to show you how to make some Mexican hot chocolate. For this recipe we're going to use milk and some chocolate tablets or powder. For this recipe you're going to add the milk into the pot. In this case we're going to make two cups of milk. So each tablet is actually good for four cups but since we're only making two cups we're going to use half a tablet of chocolate. You can put that in the pot. We're going to pretend that we're on a stove and that we're boiling the milk and you can mix it with a molinillo if you have a molinillo and that will make the drink frothy. You can also use powder if you prefer. It is easier. It melts faster. So now we have the option of making it with powder. Once the milk is boiled you can serve it on your favorite mug. You can enjoy the hot chocolate with a concha, with a molillo. You can also take the molillo, cut it in half, add some butter and toast it to have a warm snack with your hot chocolate and you can enjoy it on a cool day. So we showed you how to make a summer treat and a winter treat. We hope you enjoyed these recipes and join us again for our next video Latina. Thank you.