COCOA

Cocoa is the powder made from the crushed seeds of cacao trees. If you add other ingredients like cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar, milk, butter and vegetable fat then you can make chocolate.

Cocoa trees mainly grow in the tropical rain forests of Brazil, but it is now also cultivated in West Africa and Indonesia.

The seeds or beans are the size of almonds. They are enclosed in a fruit rather like small cucumbers, called Pods. The Pods do not have stalks, they grow straight out of the trunk of the tree.

Before you can make anything with cocoa beans they must be fermented. Whole cocoa pods are stored in boxes or under leaves until the flesh begins to ferment. The beans are then dried in the sun and roasted until the shells fall away. The remains are called nibs. The nibs are then ground until the fat from them liquefies. The result is a dark liquid which is heat-treated, then cooled in moulds or rolled into bars.

Cocoa beans were used as money by the Aztecs.