A circle completing: making raw chocolate

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On the front row, in the middle, flying :-)

It had started snowing and my grandpa Tataie had brought my mittens in his pocket. We walked away from the Children's Palace where I was doing gymnastics once a week.. In those times the Children's palace - Palatul Copiilor - was in the Cotroceni Palace, close to our home in Bucharest..
I loved to put my hand in the big pockets of my grandpa's coat as he held my hand.
That day there was something else in his pocket. A very small box, it seemed, and he stopped under the snowflakes and allowed me to open it. In the box, one square chocolate bonbon. It was for me, he said. I held it in my hand and then took a bite that revealed the most delicious inside: white, creamy, sticky, sweet and perfumed with vanilla, marzipan and nougat in the same time. I have delighted in eating itzy-bitzy smallest pieces of it until we arrived at home..
I was probably five year old.. 

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.. It was around 40 years ago and I remember that walk. 
I remember the snow and my grandpa's pocket. 
I still remember that taste and my grandpa's hand.
Just two years after that walk Romania entered into a deep darkness and chocolate was for a long long time difficult if not impossible to come by. It was even one of the most wanted items at the black market.
I forever searched for that taste and never could find anything that came close to it, even with all my trips around the world.
And now, I am making chocolate myself. :-)
Raw chocolate :-)

Saint Nicholas is In The Netherlands a huge contender for Father Christmas. In fact, some families here do not even pay attention to Christmas any more.. The biggest gift-giving is on the 5th and 6th December - and among the traditional gifts there are these huge chocolate letters.

Thus, on Friday November 28th I gave my first workshop in raw chocolate making," Just in time for Sint": raw, yummy, healthier! chocolate letters, more like Mother Nature intended them. :-) 

These last two years that I am intensively eating 80-90% raw I experimented a lot with chocolate making, for me and for V.
I love the alchemy of it and until last week I just combined intuitively all kind of ingredients. 
I had made white chocolate, brown chocolate and dark chocolate - and came up with my very own special recipe for green chocolate (because I love green, if you didn't know