Cooking nerd here. You can kind of make your own chocolate.
You almost certainly can’t make chocolate from scratch. You could, in theory do all the steps but even in the old days it was an industrial process and it’s nearly impossible to get the quality control tight enough at home. The fermentation, roasting, and grinding steps all have to be done under very precise conditions or you won’t get good chocolate.
You could just go really old school and use the Aztec recipes but that’s not “chocolate” as most people would know it. It’s more like a spiced tea.
Home cooks can buy chocolate (it’s worth it to splurge and get nice chocolate if you’re going through this much trouble) and mix it and shape it. You can make a wide array of flavored ganaches, coat things in chocolate, fill chocolate shells with stuff, etc.
The hardest part is tempering. Chocolate is actually a crystal. The short version is that if you don’t control that crystal formation through careful temperature and movement control, your chocolate will get weird and chalky; if you get that all right it’s smooth and snappy. There are books and videos on it but you’ll need to mess up a bunch of batches before you learn it.
Cooking nerd here. You can kind of make your own chocolate.
You almost certainly can’t make chocolate from scratch. You could, in theory do all the steps but even in the old days it was an industrial process and it’s nearly impossible to get the quality control tight enough at home. The fermentation, roasting, and grinding steps all have to be done under very precise conditions or you won’t get good chocolate.
You could just go really old school and use the Aztec recipes but that’s not “chocolate” as most people would know it. It’s more like a spiced tea.
Home cooks can buy chocolate (it’s worth it to splurge and get nice chocolate if you’re going through this much trouble) and mix it and shape it. You can make a wide array of flavored ganaches, coat things in chocolate, fill chocolate shells with stuff, etc.
The hardest part is tempering. Chocolate is actually a crystal. The short version is that if you don’t control that crystal formation through careful temperature and movement control, your chocolate will get weird and chalky; if you get that all right it’s smooth and snappy. There are books and videos on it but you’ll need to mess up a bunch of batches before you learn it.