Task 30: Go on a chocolate-making course - postscript

As I mentioned in my post about the chocolate-making workshop, my partner was the lovely Nana from Ghana.  She very kindly emailed me some photos she took before she had to dash off to catch her flight to Johannesburg and I thought it was worth writing a second post to include the most interesting ones, particularly the cocoa pod and beans:

Although it looks heavy, the pod is reasonably light.  It contains up to 50 seeds or beans, surrounded by a sweet pulp with a lemonade taste, which is edible.  I ate one of the beans and found it didn't have much flavour apart from a general dry bitterness.

Just to prove I did actually do some cooking, here's a photo of me heating and stirring the cream:

I've never tried piping before and had no talent for it at all, as you can see from the miscellaneous sized blobs of ganache that were emerging, watched by the unimpressed tutor:

Luckily the shape doesn't matter much at that stage, as the blobs are later rolled and moulded by hand, between your palms.  It would have been better, though, if they had at least been roughly the same size.  For the future, I think my efforts should definitely focus on eating chocolate rather than making it.