What's Chocolate Made Of
Do you know what chocolate is made of? It’s from the cacao beans! 😲
Just like coffee beans, the cacao beans are the seed of a cocoa pod, the fruit of a cocoa tree as seen in the first photo!
Unlike coffee beans that’s looks like a cherry size, the cocoa pod is way bigger! It’s about the size of your palm ✋🏼
Cacao beans grow inside of a cocoa pod filled with pulpy fruit that looks and tastes just like soursop. The seed inside pulpy fruit is the cocoa beans!
A cocoa pod weighs about 400-500g. Each has 5-7 rows of cocoa beans inside with a rough total of 50-70 cocoa beans, depending on size 😮
As for coffee beans, there are only 1-2 beans in a coffee cherry 🍒
Our Malaysian grown cacao pods are smaller in size as compared to cacao pods from other continents like Madagascar, which can grow as big as 17-20cm.
The Malaysia cocoa pod is about 12-17cm long. Hence each pod can only produce 30-40g of dried cocoa beans.
Cocoa pods grow in a variety of colours, some red some purple. Once ripen, the whole pod turns yellow and farmers harvest the ripe cocoa pods by breaking the pod to remove all the cocoa beans with flesh on.
To make chocolate, these seeds need to be fermented, dried, roasted, cracked and winnowed, then ground down with sugar.
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