Made In Hawaii… Chocolate!

                           Growing Cocoa on American Soil

During my more than monthlong stay on The Big Island of Hawaii, I visited a small Cacao Plantation, spending time learning about where chocolate comes from, its ancient history and most importantly to the Hawaiians, its recent history on the islands. I also got to handpick cocoa pods, extract the beans and later on in the morning, make chocolate from previously dried fermented beans. The best part? Tasting the final product!

The owner of the Cacao Trees explains about the cacao pods.

The following blog is my story of how Cacao Trees on The Big Island produce cacao beans, resulting in locally produced American chocolate bars! 

  

Thanks to its tropical climate, Hawaii is known for producing beautiful flowers and trees. The Farmer's Markets are filled with gorgeous fruits and vegetables. It's only in the last 10 years or so, that cocoa has been grown in Hawaii in any quality. Only 100 planted acres of cacao are growing on all the islands. About 5,600 pounds of cocoa beans are harvested on the Big Island each year. Cacao is becoming a popular crop amongst small farmers as well. 

Here are a few of my favorite tropical growers on The Big Island:

Orchid

Another orchid type

Apple Bananas

Very rare jade plant that grows on my friend's property.

Hawaii is the only state in America where chocolate can be made with locally produced ingredients. Chocolate comes from the cocoa bean, also cacao (ke' kau) bean or simply cocoa. Cocoa is the dried and fully fermented fatty seed of a large and colorful fruit that grows close to the Cacao tree.

Cacao pods that are not ripe.

A ripe pod can be left on the tree for 2-3 weeks without spoiling; allowing plantations to harvest every couple of weeks instead of daily. The Cacao tree flowers and fruits at the same time; there are always ripe pods, so harvesting is done almost year round. The pods are harvested by hand using a machete. 

Picking the ripe cacao pod from the plantation floor.
They had been knocked down by the owner.
I don't think that he wanted us welding a machete!

Pods full of cocoa beans grow directly from the trunk and branches of the 10'-12' fragile, soft-rooted trees. As they ripen over time, the pods go through a colorful evolution from green to yellow to deep maroon to candy apple red.  

The owner used a machete to cut the cacao pod off the tree.
It's a delicate business as the tree can be damaged in this process.

Along the shady aisle of the cacao trees,
the owner delicately selects and moves the pod to the ground.
Workers pick them up and carry them to the fermenting area.

I'm ripe!

Vanilla bean growing(nursing) on the Cacao Tree.

Now the work begins! Each pod is "smacked" open and the
slimy cacao beans are removed.
The empty pods are used for fertilizer.

Smack!

The colorful beauty of Mother Nature.

Inside each pod 27-32  beans are covered with a white sugary mucilaginous substance that looks and tastes nothing like chocolate. This substance must be fermented off before the beans can be roasted and processed. 

Those are  the cacao beans that eventually become the  chocolate we so love. 

To extract them, you stick your fingers up inside and slide them out.

All that's left is the delicate spine of the pod.

Next, the beans are put in a metal container and their juices drip below. We drank the lemony-flavored juice. It is considered a delicacy. It was unpasteurized, so the owner told us he could not sell it as such. However, we all enjoyed it and felt energized after drinking it. The beans are then fermented in slatted wooden boxes. The beans are spread out and slowly dried on racks in the Hawaiian sun for 22-28 days. (I did not see this part of the process.)

Newly extracted cacao beans dripping their juice into a bucket below. 

The fully fermented fatty seed is the cocoa bean, from which cocoa solids and cocoa butter are extracted. The fermenting seeds need air and create heat, so the batch must be turned several times. The purple seeds turn brown during the fermentation period. It takes about a week.  Another week is needed for the seeds to dry. 

Already dried and ready for conching.

They are the basis of chocolate, as well as other foods such as mole sauce. First though, they are sorted and roasted to perfection (didn't see this part of the process either). After roasting, they are put through a custom built "flinger" which removes their shells and leaves the pure chocolate "nib." The Cacao nibs are simply chocolate in its purest form, before anything else is added. They are the dried and fermented bits of cacao beans.

Nibs.

The texture of a cacao bean is similar to that of roasted coffee beans. They have a deep chocolate flavor which can be described as slightly bitter and nutty. At this point, sugar, vanilla powder, and/or other ingredients are added--- depending on whether dark or milk chocolate is being made. A special refiner (conche) is used to make the nibs into a liquor paste. After a second conching of up to 12 hours, lecithin is added to turn the batch into a creamy, rich, pure Hawaiian chocolate fluid. The only thing added to our homemade bars was local Coconut sugar. 

The chocolate is then tempered and molded, creating an original Hawaiian bar. Our group added raw ginger to some. We put the newly poured cacao molds into the fridge for a few minutes and viola!, We ate the decadent bars.  

Yummy!

The entire process follows a tradition of more than a thousand years. Everything is done by hand. 

When you eat your next chocolate bar, think about where it came from and how it became something that you love to eat. 

A standard chocolate bar with 70% cacao contains 80-85 beans. A milk-chocolate bar such as Hersheys, contains 6 cacao beans or about 10% of a pod. 

Enjoy your chocolate,

Mary