Chocolate Workshops

Parent and child workshops where you can learn about the history of chocolate, grind up real chocolate seeds, create your own chocolate drinks, and make chocolates to take home!

Three times a year, the Education Outreach Program offers a parent/child Chocolate Workshop at Whim. In a Chocolate Workshop, participants learn about the ecology of cacao trees and watch a short video about cacao production in Venezuela. Real cacao seeds are passed out, and participants try to peel them. Children work with parents to grind up the peeled cacao seeds using a variety of implements, then use an Aztec recipe to make, and sample, the drink first offered to Cortez by Montezuma in what is now Mexico. This drink included annatto, ancho chili peppers, and vanilla in addition to cocoa powder and water. Cortez took cacao seeds back to the Spanish court in 1519, and for the next 100 years, only the Spanish knew how to prepare chocolate.  

Participants also make a chocolate drink the Spanish way, with cinnamon and sugar. Groups of parents and kids then prepare their own chocolate snack by squeezing the ingredients together inside a plastic bag. The workshop concludes with participants melting chocolate and pouring it into molds, chilling the molds, and popping out the finished chocolates to take home. Workshops are given on Saturday mornings from 9:00 am until 12 noon at Whim Museum, and the cost is $5 per person. These workshops are sponsored by the Prosser ICC Foundation, Inc.

Chocolate Workshops for the 2005-2006 season are

Saturday, October 15, 2005
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Saturday, May 13, 2006

To register, please call Marilyn Chakroff, Education Director, at 772-0598.