Swiss Cocoa & Dasies

I wanted to continue with our FIAR time enhancing our NOW time. There wasn't a FIAR book with Switzerland in the topic, so I was delighted to find Cocoa Beans and Daisies: How Swiss Cocoa is Made, by Pascale Allamand. L loved this. He said it was just like How It's Made. I loved the layout of the book. The left pages chronicled the cocoa beans in Africa and their travels to Switzerland. The right pages showed Swiss cows and the process path of the milk. Swiss Milk Chocolate has a special flavor because of the dasies the cows love to eat.

We tasted unsweetened cocoa powder. The kids were suprised that chocolate isn't sweet. It's the sugar added to it that makes it candy. We made a chocolate "fondue" for desert.

We dipped graham sticks, marshmallows, and banana slices.

We drank hot cocoa and made sculpture out of marshmallows.

See the bear's tiny cup of cocoa. And with a real cup of cocoa right there, how could the bear not want to jump in. A chocolatey hot tub. The giraffe wanted to drink too.

He's a bit too top-heavy and fell in.

We talked about the different climate in Africa and Switzerland. The cocoa beans grow in the rainforest. The cows thrive munching on cool grasses.