Watch a Modern Chocolatier Use an Ancient Technique to Make a Delicious Hot Chocolate Drink

You won't find any modern culinary bells and whistles at Chocolate D' Taza. This fourth-generation chocolatier, located in the town of Antigua, Guatemala, is using ancient Mayan techniques to produce a deliciously rich hot chocolate drink.

The family-owned business uses a 3000-year-old technique to produce their handmade chocolate, which takes four days to make. After cacao beans—or "the food of the gods," as they were once called—are gathered from the fruit, they're roasted over an open fire until a char develops. The beans are then placed on a traditional grinding stone called a metate.

Though it might have been more common for their ancestors to add corn and chili to their cacao concoctions, the artisans at Chocolate D' Taza opt for a mix of cinnamon, cardamom, and sugar.

Once turned into 4-ounce chunks, the chocolate is cut into tablets on a special plant-based mat called a petate and divided in fourths, which can then be added into 90°F water. The temperature has to be just right to melt the chocolate to create a delicious Guatemalan hot chocolate.

You can watch the four-day process in the video from National Geographic below.