How Chocolate is Made

If the average American eats 10 to 12 pounds of chocolate a year, then I’m already falling behind for 2011. That’s okay; eating more chocolate is not one of my New Year’s resolutions!

I do love chocolate, though! I even enjoy reading about it. While researching the chocolate crisis for an earlier post, I learned that it can take four days to make chocolate “from bean to bar.”  (“Bean to bar” means from the time the cacao beans reach the manufacturer to the time the finished chocolate bars are ready to be shipped out.)

The manufacturing process of chocolate is not only interesting, but it gives us a great opportunity to practice using passive voice in English!

The passive voice is formed by combining any form of to be with the past participle of a verb.  The past participle is the “ed” form in regular verbs. Only verbs that take an object (transitive verbs) can be used in passive voice.

The passive voice is useful when you want to focus on an action and not on the person who performed the action. When talking about making chocolate, it is the process that is important, not the person who does it.  Did you notice that the title of today’s post is in passive voice: “How Chocolate is Made”? The word “is” is a form of to be and the word “made” is the past participle of the verb  to make.

Below is a description of the chocolate-making process. To make the passive voice, fill in each blank with the past participle of the verb in parentheses.

1. The beans are _____ to the chocolate factory. (ship)
2. At the chocolate factory, the beans are _____  and _____ . (inspect, clean)
3. After the beans have been _____ , they are _____ . ( sort, roast)
4. Next, the outer shells of the beans will be _____. The inner parts are called nibs. (crack)
5. The nibs are _____ into a thick paste.  (grind)
6. Sugar and milk are _____ to the chocolate paste. (add)
7. All the ingredients will be _____ together well. (blend)
8. The chocolate is _____ and _____ several times. (heat, cool)
9. This process is _____ tempering; it makes the chocolate smooth and shiny. (call)
10. The chocolate is _____ into bars. (shape)

This video from Olive and Sinclair Southern Artisan Chocolate shows how they make their chocolate bars “from bean to bar.” The video has no words, so you can be the narrator, using passive voice!

Olive and Sinclair Artisan Chocolate from josh anderson on Vimeo.

Here are the past participles: 1. shipped 2. inspected, cleaned 3. sorted, roasted 4. cracked 5. ground 6. added 7. blended 8. heated, cooled 9. called 10. shaped

_______________

How much chocolate has been eaten at your house this year?

_______________