Chocolate - All About Chocolate

Introduction: Growing Cacao for Chocolate

Cacao, Chocolate’s Source
Throughout the year, the cacao tree flowers and produces brightly colored pods about the size and shape of small footballs.

Slice open one of these pods, and you’ll find the source of chocolate—cacao seeds embedded in a sweet pulp.

Cacao pods contain the seeds for chocolate.
Thirty to 50 of these almond-sized seeds, covered in yummy pulp, sit nestled together within the center of just one pod. That’s enough to make about seven milk chocolate candy bars!

Cacao and coffee require similar processing.
Main harvests occur twice a year, but cacao farmers regularly check for any newly ripened pods and scoop out the valuable seeds.

Just like coffee beans, these seeds must be fermented, dried, roasted, and then ground to release the delicious chocolate flavor we’ve come to know and love.

Continue to The Cacao Tree’s Basic Biology

Early botanists brought back drawings showing cacao pods budding off the trunk. People at home corrected these drawings, thinking that the odd positioning was an “artist’s error.”

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