My Son Loves Chocolate Porridge

Have you ever eaten chocolate porridge? And how do you make them?

From where I live, Chocolate porridge is called ** Champorado** and is made of glutinous rice( optional), rice cooked till very tender and tablea that made from grilled and ground cacao beans.

Chamdporad is often cooked in the morning for breakfast and when it is the rainy season when one needs warm food on their stomach.

My son loves Chocolate porridge

Of course, sweetened with milk and sometimes, complemented with milk

My mother had several cacao trees on her farm and she collected the seeds and dried them in the sun. When there are a lot already, about 5-10 kilos of dried cacao seeds, she grills them and whenever I am around, I would do it and peel off the membrane that coats them.

The process is laborious and hot but it's all worth it. She then takes the peeled cacao seeds to the local market to grind. We had to pay per kilo to do thsi and when the ground cacao seed comes, it will still be hot and in liquid form.

We dry them up in a banana leaf and sometimes mold them into smaller circles. Too bad when we moved to a new house a few years ago, we lost our mold.

When dried, we then keep the tablea in an airtight container for them to last a long time and use them when we cook champorado.

I don't wait for the rainy season to come to make champorado, but I make them whenever we have left-over rice so it won't be spoiled and thrown.

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Hot tablea is also good, I don't know maybe it was only for the love of Filipinos in rice that they invested champorado, beside, Rice is Life and Life is Rice.

What about you, have you been someone process the cacao seeds into tablea?

Tableas are raw materials in making chocolates! Do you know that? There was even a time when I planned on learning to make one but I lost track of time and got busy with life. I hope someday, I will have much time to do what I wanted and planned.

One this for sure, Cjhamporados are the best.

Would you agree?