Chocolate Making Workshop at the Chocolate Museum Cusco

The chocolate museum on Plaza Regocijo

The workshop is held in a colonial house on the corner of Plaza Regocijo, easy to spot by the green and orange flags hanging from its wooden balconies. Inside, a small museum explains the story of cacao with displays on the plant, the pods and the tools used to make chocolate over the centuries, and there is a shop selling chocolate, cacao tea and cacao butter products.

The workshop room has long shared tables where each participant has a place and their own set of tools. The setting is relaxed and friendly, with small groups and an instructor who moves from table to table. Many travellers book this Cusco chocolate workshop for a rainy afternoon or as a gentle activity while they adapt to the altitude before longer trips to the Sacred Valley or Machu Picchu.

Peruvian cacao and its history

Cacao has deep roots in South America. Scientists believe the cacao tree first grew in the upper Amazon basin, which includes parts of Peru, and that its seeds were used here thousands of years ago before chocolate drinks became sacred among the Maya and the Aztecs of Mexico. Today Peru is known for fine-flavour cacao, much of it from warm valleys such as La Convención, north of Cusco.

During the workshop your instructor explains how cacao travelled from these forests to Mesoamerican temples and then to Europe, where sugar and milk changed it into the chocolate we know. You learn to recognise cacao pods, taste the bitter beans and understand why the climate of the Cusco region produces cacao valued by chocolate makers around the world.

Inside the bean-to-bar workshop

The class follows four essential steps. First you roast cacao beans in a clay pan until their aroma fills the room, then crack and peel them by hand to separate the nibs from the husks. Next you grind the nibs on a metate, a flat grinding stone, with a mano, the same way it was done in ancient Mexico, and watch the nibs turn into glossy paste. Finally you see how a melangeur refines the paste into smooth chocolate.

Then you prepare hot chocolate drinks the way the Maya and the Spanish colonists did, choosing spices and ingredients to suit your taste. To finish, you pour chocolate into moulds and add toppings such as nuts, dried fruit, quinoa or cacao nibs. The bars need about 45 minutes to set after the class, so you can collect them later the same day.

Plaza Regocijo and central Cusco

Plaza Regocijo, known in Inca times as Kusipata, is a quiet square one block from the Plaza de Armas, surrounded by colonial buildings, arcades and the Cusco municipal palace. Its garden and benches make it a pleasant place to wait while your chocolate sets, and the streets around it are full of cafés, crafts shops and small museums.

From the workshop it is a short walk to the cathedral, the San Pedro market and the Qorikancha temple, so the class fits easily into a day of sightseeing in the historic centre. The best time to book is the 11:00 or 13:30 class if you want to collect your chocolates before evening, or the 16:00 class as a sweet end to a day of exploring Cusco.