cacao and cocoa and chocolates!!!

CACAO - COCOA - CHOCOLATES

cacao tree 

'Cacao' is the plant that produces chocolate. The

cacao tree originally came from Central and South

America, and today is also cultivated in Africa,

Southeast Asia, Hawaii, and the West Indies. We have

a lot of it in our backyard, too. Its seed are

'cocoa beans,' with thirty or forty beans found

inside large seed pods that grow on the trunks of the

trees. The beans are surrounded by a sweet pulp

that you can sulk and really tastes good just like

'santol/sandor' fruit only it's sweet not sour, and that

probably originally drew people to the beans.

After procedures that include fermenting, drying, cleaning,

roasting, winnowing, blending, refining, conching, tempering,

molding - and more others - the beans become cocoa or

chocolate.

PARTS AND PROCESS

'Nibs' is the name given to the cacao seeds, or beans. The

nibs must go through four basic steps before they become

chocolate liquor, the term used for pure chocolate.

'Fermentation' is a process that removes the pulp

that surrounds the nibs when they are removed from the pod.

During fermentation the seeds germinate, then are killed by

high temperatures. Or you can just suck it just like

the way you such the sandor fruit, like I said awhile

ago.

'Drying' follows, with the beans losing as much as

half their weight as moisture is removed. Exposure to the

sun is the best way to dry the nibs.

'Roasting' comes next. This takes more than an hour

at temperatures of 94 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Or in our case, we just put in fire while turning it over

once in while to have the nibs roasted equally until

it got dark brown - almost black - but not burned, or until

it is crisp or at least the shell is crisp enough for easy removal

of it.

the dried beans

'Winnowing' is what we call the removal of a thin, useless shell.

Now the beans are ready to be ground into that precious "cacao liquor."

MAKING CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE

From bean to bar, producing chocolate for eating is a complicated process.

Fat — cocoa butter — is removed to make it a dry

powder. It may be treated with alkalines, or “Dutched.”

This powder is the basis of cocoa.

'Cocoa' usually refers to that dry powder used to make a

hot, yummy chocolate drink or in recipes. Cocoa may be either

'dutched' or 'natural'.

chocolate - grounded cacao beans

Dutched cocoa has been treated with

an alkali to neutralize some of the acidity of chocolate.

It is darker in color than natural cocoa, but has a milder

flavor.

Fat is then returned to the cocoa, and sugar is added,

as well as other flavorings, such as vanilla. For milk

chocolate, of course, milk is added — either powdered,

condensed, or in small clumps.

The resulting mass is then 'conched.' This is a

grinding and mixing process that may go on for days and

produces the velvety texture of good chocolate. The earliest

conching machines used grinding stones shaped like conch

shells.

'Tempering' is a process used to keep chocolate from

developing 'bloom.' Bloom is those white spots found on

chocolate that has become too warm or too damp. It doesn't

hurt the chocolate for eating, but is not considered

attractive.

Happily, chocolate that gets 'out of temper' can be

melted and tempered again.

I love hot chocolate especially if its pure cocoa made from

cacao. We make it at home and it really is good. I love

munching them too. Cocoa/tablea is good in champorados too.

It tastes better than the commercial cocoa I bought and once

tried to eat or to put on my recipe, they don't just taste like

the natural cacao cocoa.

We really make our own chocolate, we do have cacao on our yard,

maybe atleast 20 trees. But I couldn't find the right words for

the process and terminologies used for these cacao parts without

reading something related to it. Which I mostly owed to

the book "The Chocolate Cupid Killings" by JoAnna Carl. It really

is an interesting book and of course, informative. Thanks JoAnna!!