Cacao – Chocolate!

We have a cacao tree on our property! Did you ever think we would be making our own chocolate? Well if you come visit us you can try to make some too, or at least taste what real chocolate is like. With all it’s health benefits in tact. For more info on the benefits of chocolate, you should read “Health by Chocolate”, by Victoria Laine. This book is available for purchase online, or in Edmonton at local bookstores and organic grocery and health food stores. You can also find fair trade, organic and raw sources of chocolate in Edmonton at Earth’s General Store, Organic Roots and Planet Organic. I miss those stores already!

Here’s what I know about Cacao… (courtesy of wikipedia)

Cacao (Theobroma cacao) (Mayan: kakaw, Nahuatl: Cacahuatl), or the cocoa plant, is a small (4–8 m or 15–26 ft tall) evergreen tree in the family Sterculiaceae(alternatively Malvaceae), native to the deep tropical region of the Americas. Its seeds are used to make cocoa and chocolate. There are two prominent competing hypotheses about the origins of the original wild Theobroma cacao tree. One is that wild examples were originally distributed from southeastern Mexico to the Amazon basin, with domestication taking place both in the Lacandon area of Mexico and in lowland South America. But recent studies of Theobroma cacao genetics seem to show that the plant originated in the Amazon and was distributed by humans throughout Central America and Mesoamerica.

The tree is today found growing wild in the low foothills of the Andes at elevations of around 200–400 m (650-1300 ft) in the Amazon and Orinoco river basins. It requires a humid climate with regular rainfall and good soil. It is an understory tree, growing best with some overhead shade. The leaves are alternate, entire, unlobed, 10–40 cm (4-16 in) long and 5–20 cm (2-8 in) broad. Poisonous and inedible, they are filled with a creamy, milky liquid and taste spicy and unpleasant.

The flowers are produced in clusters directly on the trunk and older branches; they are small, 1–2 cm (1/2-1 in) diameter, with pink calyx. While many of the world’s flowers are pollinated by bees (Hymenoptera) or butterflies/moths (Lepidoptera), cacao flowers are pollinated by tiny flies, forcipomyia midges in the order Diptera.^[1] The fruit, called a cacao pod, is ovoid, 15–30 cm (6-12 in) long and 8–10 cm (3-4 in) wide, ripening yellow to orange, and weighs about 500 g (1 lb) when ripe. The pod contains 20 to 60 seeds, usually called “beans”, embedded in a white pulp. Each seed contains a significant amount of fat (40–50% as cocoa butter). Their most noted active constituent is theobromine, a compound similar to caffeine.

The scientific name Theobroma means “food of the gods“. The word cacao itself derives from the Nahuatl (Aztec language) wordcacahuatl, learned at the time of the conquest when it was first encountered by the Spanish. Similar words for the plant and its by-products are attested in a number of other indigenous Mesoamerican languages

So how to you make chocolate out of cacao?

step 1 – find a pod that is ready

pod measures 6" long by 3" across

I dread this part, because to get to the cacao tree, we need to go on the path near the creek, and I always get bitten by mosquitos down there. If you are wondering why that is a concern – read the post about dengue fever.

Anyway, the pod should be a bit green, if it has turned red it is too ripe or too dry and not good for making chocolate. Here is another problem, the squirell likes the young pods so he chews a hole in them before they can ripen, so we never get a mature one ready to process. We’ll have to tie some kind of bag around the ones that are growing now to protect them.

step 2 – open the pod to get out the beans

the beans really look like beans!

This is easier said than done.

The skin on these pods is about 1/2 inch thick and hard to cut.

Brad had to sharpen our knives so I could get through it.

Even still it took me an hour to get all the beans out.

step 3 – clean the beans and let them ferment for 3 days

The pod we got was a bit less mature, and we don’t have to do this step. The beans came out clean from the pod, so all we need to do is step 5.

step 4 – clean the beans well and dry them

I think this is pretty self-explanatory?

step 5 – roast the beans

They look a bit like crumbly kidney beans

We’ve just been letting them sit in the sun, and now they are turning a dark brown.

Pretty soon they will be ready to grind up into powder.

I didn’t have enough to really put through the blender, so once it did what it could, I used the mortar and pestle to grind up the beans even finer. Then I put the powder in a jar to use later. I hope we can get more pods next time so we can get enough to just use the blender.

step 6 – grind the beans into powder

1 cacao pod = 1/3 cup powder

Thank goodness we have a vitamix – it can do this task very easily. I expect to be able to do this in a couple more days, so I will put up a photo and let you know what we will do with our first batch of homemade cacao powder.

Our neighbor who told us how to process the cacoa makes a rich thick powder that has an oily texture and rich aroma. They use it for hot chocolate and for pie.

I used the powder we got for something special – the icing for my birthday cake! Was it ever good!