Yun and I LOVE chocolate. Since we have been talking about visiting the Beryl’s Chocolate Museum for a while, we got one of those targeted ads for the workshop. We decided to try it out because being an oompa-loompa for a day sounded kinda fun.
So, we took the train (me from Putrajaya Sentral, Yun from wherever she came from) and met up at the Serdang Jaya station via the yellow Putrajaya MRT line. We had to walk about 800 meters to the factory from the MRT station (during which we found out that Serdang really wasn’t a walkable city.
When we finally reached the factory, we took pictures with the sculptures and murals outside, then had a slice of crepe cake and tea while waiting for our workshop to begin.
At around 2.30pm, the workshop started with a briefing from the facilitators. They gave us the safety equipment (hairnets, aprons, sanitisers) and the tools we would need to make our three chocolate bars.
After the initial briefing and introductions, we started by adding some colour to our chocolate bar molds. We were given blue, pink, and gold coloured cocoa butter that we could apply onto the mold. For this part, I really unleashed my inner Picasso and went a little bit crazy with the colours. After we added colour to the mold, we had to put the mold in the freezer for a while.
While waiting for the colours to solidify, the facilitators shared with us the whole process of planting the cocoa tree, all the way to making the bar. We even got to try the cocoa fruit (which tasted a little bit like mangosteen but was really hard to chew).
After the knowledge session, we had to temper (cool down in choco-lingo) the heated chocolate using the surface of the table. We learned that dark chocolate needs to be cooled down to 31-32°C while white chocolate needs to be cooled down lower than that to around 28-29°C.
Once the chocolate was ready, we were all given two cups (one dark chocolate and one white chocolate). We had to weigh the chocolate bar to make sure it’s the right weight before adding our toppings to the bars. It was really stressful to get it exactly right.
After we were done customising our chocolate bars, we had to put them in the fridge to harden. While waiting for that, we were given hot cocoa (made from the extra chocolate from just now) with baby marshmallows. The cocoa drink was SO DELICIOUS, I was so tempted to ask for another cup!
Once the bars had hardened and were ready, it was time for us to wrap them up. I spent a bit more time admiring my beautiful creation before wrapping them up.
We were really happy with our work for the day (and the outcome of it, regardless of how deformed it was). I don’t know about Yun, but after the workshop, I was seriously considering a part-time hustle as an Oompa-Loompa, especially in this recession.
