Heart to Hearth Cookery

Chocolate Cakes

Yes, what you are looking at in the picture are really chocolate cakes!  The term “cake” had a much broader meaning in the 17th and 18th centuries.  While the chocolate cakes look more in the form of what we know as cookies today, the English primarily referred to cookies as small cakes.  Thus the 100% pure chocolate with ALL its cacao butter that comes off a metate are called chocolate cakes.   The “cakes” would then be grated into a chocolate powder and mixed with hot water in a chocolate pot. Chocolate was a beverage!  This picture was obviously focused on the chocolate as all the participants in the workshop are headless.  But the class was proud of all the chocolate cakes they made from roasting cacao beans and processing the roasted beans on a metate.  This experience of making chocolate cakes is available to you with my chocolate workshops.  I have one chocolate workshop each year in February near my home but the metates have traveled and workshops can be planned at any location near you with a hearth.