Springtime love affair

The rainy season is starting in Chavin De Huantar. The days are getting more humid; we see some rainy days. It feels a bit colder. Over here it's what we call springtime!

That means that the puna is getting rained on, the herbs are turning green again, the rivers are slowly waking. But the thing I like most is the smell of wet earth and fresh greens!

I like plain single-origin chocolate with nothing added. I eat this for breakfast with some nuts. During the day I snack on it for energy. And during the night I stay away from it, or I won't be sleeping that night!

Even though I mainly started making chocolate for myself as a hobby, I find there is such deep pleasure in sharing it. Seeing someone indulge in a bar you just created and feeling the happiness radiating out of that person is a beautiful feeling.

I love experimenting, and I love plants, so it's only natural that I shall start playing around with local indigenous plants and trying all kinds of combinations. And I've noticed that people like these experiments!

At the moment I'm very much in love with Muña, a medicinal plant that grows only on very high altitude plains. Minthostachys Mollis is her scientific name, and she's family of well-known plants like lavender, jasmine, basil, mint and rosemary.

She's renowned here for curing lung- and stomach-related ailments as well as helping acclimatisation to high altitude.

I love her because of her minty taste with a punch, kind of like lavender and rosemary have a flagrant edge, but then minty. Needless to say that this combines very well with chocolate. 

The other day I made a cup of hot cocoa from a batch of 100% Chuncho from Cusco which I thickened with lucuma powder, then added cashew milk and had it simmer with some Muña for a while.

Probably the best cup I had in my life!

Currently I'm waiting for my packaging and a tempering machine to arrive from Italy.

I'm inspired and experimenting with different indigenous plants and see what works well as an inclusion for my bars or pralines. Feel free and take part in the experiment and let me know what your favourite inclusions are.