Cacao Arabuco Kai

09/03/2024

El estudio sugiere que hace al menos 5,000 años, los productos del cacao se utilizaban entre las antiguas culturas de América del Sur y Central.

24/08/2022

20/04/2022

https://equltura.com/podcast/podcast-los-abrazos-de-abuelita/

Origen y significados del chocolate. El espíritu del cacao vive en todas las mujeres, vive en todos. Descubre el valor de la espuma de un […]

12/04/2022

The more I learn about chocolate, the more I am coming to this conclusion: a lot of what we think is nature-driven is actually HUMAN-driven 🖐🏼🍫

When we taste chocolate, we instinctively associate what we experience to the cacao origin. We read “Arauca, Colombia” or “Bali, Indonesia”, and we believe that we are tasting the natural aromas of that cacao. But we fail to remember that cacao must pass through hundreds of hands before it is turned into chocolate.

From farm to factory and from bean to bar, each actor of the supply chain performs tiny little actions that can enhance or compromise the quality of the chocolate at any given time: pruning, harvesting, fermenting, drying, storing, shipping, roasting and tempering just to name a few!

Along its journey, cacao is manipulated countless times and has many chances to take up unwanted flavors or to see its natural aromas altered. For example, when we taste off-flavors in the chocolate, these can be the result of:

- an expert cacao farmer having all the care in the world, but an inexperienced chocolate maker ruining it all 😭

- a chocolate maker unexpectedly receiving a disappointing batch of cacao and what you taste is the best that she/he could make out of it 🤷🏽‍♂️

- the most expert cacao farmer and the most skillful chocolate maker getting screwed up by an incompetent transportation company 🚛

- a cacao importer doing his/her best job, but the cacao beans were defective since departure from origin 👎🏼

A human chose the fermentation and the drying methods based on the tools available. A human chose the brands and the kinds of chocolate machines based on preference and budget. A human chose times and temperatures. A human was either an amateur at the beginning of the journey or a navigated cacao expert.

Chocolate is the summary of it all, not only a direct expression of how cacao was in nature.

Next time you bite into a piece of chocolate, don’t think only about the cacao origin/variety/terroir, but take into consideration all the human manipulation that the cacao was subjected to before getting into your mouth 😋🍫

Appreciate the efforts, and forgive the mistakes. We are only humans after all.

04/04/2022

Tonight on Channel 4 in the UK (8pm) Dispatches will release a documentary on that iconic British chocolate company: Cadburys. Revealing, it says, 'for the first time child labour in its supply chain'.

Sorry to say that child labour, and slavery, has probably been going on in West Africa for probably as long as Cadbury's have been making chocolate.

Aptly timed just before Easter, it's bound to put a few people off of purchasing cheap, mass produced and unethical chocolate. Many of us will be questioning the certification programs that they hide behind. I hope the show will give more insight into how programs like 'cocoalife' really work in practise.

For those of us who think of Cadbury's as one of Britain's great institutions, it's worth noting that Mondelez (Cadbury's parent company) have yet, as far as we are aware, to pay a penny in UK corporation tax.

You can watch it after airing via this link:
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/cadbury-exposed-dispatches

Chocolate Tree, and many craft chocolate makers like us, have taken a stance against the abhorent big cocoa industry. In fact it's often what motivates us: to make a change for good. Cacao from smallholders working with co-ops typically in South America, where cacao orginiates, offer the solution. Paying premium prices for high quality, agroforested and ethically traded cacao is how we do it. Read more on the About Us section of our website, and feel welcome to contact us with any queries.

💯🍫❤

04/04/2022

Thanks to the Chocolate Quality Analysis Program by The Chocolate Alliance I FINALLY understood the differences between Acidity, Bitterness and Astringency in chocolate 😋🍫

Week after week, sample after sample, these sensory terms that have always been hard for me to grasp became perfectly clear and distinguished. While tasting notes are quite personal and have a limited usefulness in the assessment of quality, these chocolate attributes have an intrinsic objectivity to them that allow for a more accurate analysis of a chocolate sample, resulting in a more helpful feedback for a chocolate maker. Ready to learn the lesson? Let’s dive deep:

🧪 ACIDITY = Presence or sensation of acids in the chocolate.
Caused by: the actions of microorganisms during fermentation.
The most common acids that you can taste in chocolate are citric acids (ex. lemon), lactic acid (ex. yogurt) and malic acids (ex. green apple).
Physical sensation: acidity increases the saliva in the mouth and makes swallowing easier.

👊🏼 BITTERNESS = One of the five tastes (together with sweetness, sourness, saltiness and umami).
Caused by: alkaloids (naturally occurring compounds) in the chocolate.
Tolerance to bitterness can be trained and increased.
Physical sensation: a pungent, sharp and harsh flavor in the mouth.

👅 ASTRINGENCY = A sensation of dryness in the mouth.
Caused by: pseudo-tannins in the chocolate that cause the precipitation of salivary proteins, therefore reducing the saliva’s ability to lubricate.
Astringency can be sensed throughout the entire tasting, especially in the finish.
Physical sensation: a tightening feeling and lack of lubrication in the mouth.

Neither of these attributes is good or bad. It all depends on their intensity and how it correlates to the intensity of all the other attributes in the chocolate. During the tasting classes, we tasted some chocolate bars whose acidity and bitterness worked brilliantly together, others where acidity was a clear sign of a defect, some more where astringency was intense but it contributed to a longer finish, resulting in a positive experience.

Do you enjoy acidity, bitterness and astringency in chocolate? 👇🏼

24/03/2022

Yesterday I stumbled upon a YouTube video on chocolate: a baker was testing the performance of “expensive” chocolate (Valrhona) against “cheap” chocolate (Lindt) in the making of 3 different desserts 🍪🍰🍮

Leaving aside that Valrhona is couverture while Lindt is not, what caught my attention was the comment section. Many people considered the cheap Lindt chocolate as their expensive alternative, being almost outraged by the cost of the fine couverture. Their go-to choices for baking at home were brands like Hershey’s, Dove or Ghirardelli. This made me think: why do we have such a low bar for the price of chocolate? 🍫🤔

Chocolate is not a staple food, we don’t consume it in large quantities, and we eat it pretty rarely compared to other foods. So why should chocolate have the same price of a loaf of bread, a pack of zucchini or a bag of dried beans?

I find that childhood explains many adult behaviors, including our attitude towards chocolate. As kids, most of us got used to viewing chocolate as:

💰 A CHEAP food
🛒 Always AVAILABLE
❤ An EMOTIONAL tool (used as a reward, a bribe or a pacifier)

We definitely brought these beliefs into our adulthood. In our minds, the average price for chocolate is so low that anything that costs just a few dollars more can be marketed by companies as “premium, luxury, fine, exclusive” and so on. Valrhona isn’t even the best/most expensive chocolate couverture on the market, so I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to convince professionals and amateurs to buy anything better 😓

Unfortunately, we were never taught to consider chocolate as something special and valuable (also because we probably scarfed down more sugar, milk, artificial flavorings and vegetable oils than cacao itself). We were never told about the humongous amount of people, time and efforts required to make chocolate happen. This is why explaining the worth of “expensive chocolate” to the average consumer is now so tough. Our childhood beliefs are the hardest to dismantle.

What beliefs around chocolate did you have before discovering craft chocolate? 👇🏼

(I personally didn’t even like dark chocolate because in my mind it was only for health purposes 🙈)

15/02/2022

Palate fatigue is a thing 🥵🍫

When you taste more than 4 or 5 different chocolate bars in one tasting, your ability to distinguish between different tasting notes diminishes sample after sample.
Why does this happen? 🤔

You might be surprised to know that it’s not the nose and the taste buds, both highly involved in the tasting experience, to get tired and overworked. It’s mostly our BRAIN that starts to be overwhelmed and mixes things up 🧠🙉

The nose and the taste buds simply send signals and information to the brain, and they could do this all day long. But our “human machine”, aka our brain, can only process so much data at a time before getting confused, exhausted and deceiving. Especially when we taste similar products, trying to discern the subtle differences between samples (during beer, wine, tea or chocolate tastings for example), our brain is bombarded with similar sensory data and it finds increasingly difficult to focus and process all that information 🤖⚡️

When “palate fatigue” (more like “brain fatigue” at this point) occurs, all chocolate starts to taste the same, off-flavors are flattened and the judgment on any following sample is compromised. To avoid palate fatigue during a chocolate tasting:

🍫 Set a limited number of samples before you begin. This should not exceed 4 or 5 samples in one tasting.

⏰️ Take breaks between samples. Let the aftertaste fully develop and vanish, then take many sips of warm water to clean the palate and wait a couple of minutes before the next sample.

🍽 If you need to taste more than 5 samples in one day, divide all the samples in small groups (one group for one tasting) and wait 2 to 3 hours between tastings.

Do you ever experience palate fatigue during your chocolate tastings? What do you do to avoid it? 👇🏼

16/01/2022

Did you know that, in the alcoholic realm of drinks, wine isn’t the best one to pair with chocolate? 🍷🤔

Tannins, a group of bitter and astringent compounds, are produced by plants to make themselves unpalatable, so that animals don’t eat the fruits before they are ripe. You see, both wine and (dark) chocolate are rich in tannins. Unless you choose wines that tend to the sweeter side and chocolate with low cocoa content, the two will tend to clash in an overwhelming dryness in the mouth. Of course, to each her/his own: chocolate and wine tastings are great for true aficionados that want to discover the best of both worlds! But don’t feel like an outsider if you don’t enjoy the experience and prefer to have them separately.

Fine drinks like rum, whisky, brandy, gin, port wine, and even beer, are more suitable, delicate and complementary companions for chocolate 🥃🍸🍺
This is why you don’t see many wine inclusion bars in the craft chocolate market.

I am boozing up this gray Sunday morning with a 75% dark chocolate by Definite chocolate made with directly traded fine cacao from Finca Elvesia in the Dominican Republic and Dominican rum. Craft chocolate makers don’t pour the alcohol in the chocolate, but infuse the cocoa nibs in their chosen alcohol and let them soak up all the extra flavors for weeks ⏰️

The beginning is all golden raisins, dates and figs. A triumph of dried fruits! But where is the rum? Just be patient for a second and the magic will unfold for you. A spicy touch of clove and a delicate floral note of orange blossom accompany the opening of the intense flavor of alcohol: a pure, intense and inebriating taste of sweet rum will confirm that those 30 days of cocoa nibs soaking have worked wonders 🌸🥃🍊

Definitely not for the faint-hearted! But if you love rum, you are going to purchase this again and again.

The finishing is intensely cocoa with sweet and fruity undertones.

What is your favorite alcohol to pair with chocolate? 👇🏼

10/01/2022

You definitely don’t need to buy only award-winning chocolate 🍫🏆

There are many brands that don’t participate in international competitions that will blow your mind anyway. And awards don’t come cheap: companies pay a fee for every product they want to enter in every single category of the competition. So please don’t ever make a choice based on award stickers.

But if you are already a fan of a chocolate maker, the fact that she/he is also winning awards can be nonetheless a nice confirmation that you are spending your money right 💰👌🏼

Peruvian bean-to-bar maker Cacaosuyo is one of the most award-winning chocolate brands of the past 10 years. There isn’t one single bar of them that hasn’t won something at a certain point. But what is important to me is that they have been one of my first fine chocolate loves and they still are 8 years later.

The 70% Piura Select and the 70% Lakuna bars have been staple purchases for me, but I just couldn’t remember how the 70% Chuncho tasted like. So I bought it again to freshen up my memory 😋🇵🇪

In my experience, Chuncho cacao doesn’t have those super bright, tropical and citrus tasting notes typical of, let’s say, Piura cacao. It has instead more common fruity notes of apricot, plum and cherry. At the same time, it is not as sour and savory as the Lakuna bar (with pungent tasting notes of ripe banana, green grapes and olives), but it has a floral note of rose and a vegetal note of grass that offer a delicate herbal background 🌹🌿🍒

To recap:

- Love citrus, bright and tropical notes? Grab the Piura.

- Want sour and savory notes? The Lakuna is the perfect bar.

- Like the combination of fruity, floral and herbal notes? Definitely get the Chuncho.

How important are award stickers when you shop for chocolate? 👇🏼

31/12/2021

While we shop frenetically for chocolate this Christmas, the opportunities to be misled by deceiving marketing claims increase too.

06/09/2021

“Cuenta la mitología azteca que fueron las mujeres las responsables de guardar, aun a costa de sus vidas, el secreto del ‘tesoro sagrado’. La esposa del dios Quetzalcóatl (deidad de la sabiduría, la luz y los cultivos) junto a otras mujeres, se sacrificaron antes de revelar dónde se encontraba el tesoro de la ciudad. La narrativa continúa, y dice que Quetzalcóatl fertilizó la tierra con la sangre de su amada para dar vida al árbol de cacao; el color ligeramente rojo y el sabor amargo del fruto lo adjudicaron al sacrificio de las valientes mujeres, y de la princesa en cuestión, y así fue como la cultura del cacao entre los ancestros ganó terreno. Este es uno de tantos hermosos mitos sobre el ‘Alimento de los dioses’:el cacao.

Entonces, desde el mito y los inframundos hasta nuestros tiempos, la presencia de las mujeres en el mundo del cacao tiene el sabor del chocolate y la inspiración de las mujeres que ofrendaron sus vidas para salvar el ‘Alimento de los dioses’, ese que dejó de ser secreto para ser de consumo masivo y patrimonio histórico de estas tierras”.

Ilustración: Victoria Gaspar realizada especialmente para Denisse L. y su marca de chocolate en Oaxaca FlorCacao 🌱🍫💜🤎✨

Texto: Elizabeth Castro, artículo “Mujeres de cacao y chocolate”

13/08/2021

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chocolates-secret-ingredient-is-fermenting-microbes/

Underneath the shiny wrapper, a chocolate bunny is a fermented food

19/06/2021

Big Chocolate companies will not be stopped with attempted lawsuits.

The best lawyers and a bag full of money to corrupt anybody in between will always save them. I stopped relying on governments, politics, certifications and international associations to do justice in the chocolate industry a long time ago. I don’t trust anything and anybody in high places. But although we can feel tiny, insignificant and powerless, remember that we still hold the biggest weapon of all. There is only ONE way as small consumers to fight this battle: put your money where your mouth is.

Fiercely commenting online your indignation for child labor and then scarfing down a $1 chocolate bar is hypocritical. Child labor is a direct result of extreme poverty, which is a direct result of cheap prices, which is a direct result of a finished product that must have the lowest possible price tag in order for big companies to bank in those high profit margins. To put this in the most practical and raw way possible: if cocoa farmers in West Africa were paid sufficiently and abundantly for their cocoa, they would feel no need nor desire to enslave children or laborers. Or at least, the chances of that happening would be dramatically reduced.

The only way to change these companies’ attitudes is to make sure they see a downward arrow on their sales charts during quarterly meetings. Only lower sales will give them the clear sign that consumers don’t stand behind their broken promises and misleading marketing anymore. That consumers have had enough of their behaviors, and would rather spend their money elsewhere.

If money is their only driving force to do evil, I believe that only money can be their driving force to do good.

Next time you shop for chocolate, pay more attention to the price tag than to anything else. Want to end child labor and slavery in the chocolate industry? Then remember that ethical chocolate can never come at a discounted price.

22/04/2021

Buenos días !☕✨

Excelente! 🌰🍫🌸 💞

💥

22/04/2021

If we look at the nutritional value of a cocoa bean, it looks like a complete and nutritious meal on its own.