Mr. Smith: I have it on highest authority that this traditional secret recipe has been handed down in the Granger family for generations. I’m sure you can keep a secret. Buttermilk, cacao beans, sugar and Haggis.
" After you smell it and sip it, you can chew it too, " she said, noting that the toppings, which today might also include ingredients like cacao nibs or toffee, lend a crunch and texture to the pudding-like drink.
The class that I taught was mostly women and they were all very excited and enthusiastic about learning new methods of processing their cacao and new recipes to make with it.
So rather than adding sugar from a cane, they're now adding the sweetness of the cacao flesh to make it 100% - Cacao. - Cacao, even though it's only perhaps 70% cocoa bean.
In a more exotic transformation, bacteria and fungi take turns munching on piles of cacao, mellowing out bitter polyphenols and helping create the complex and delicious taste of chocolate.
Or if it's cold and I need something warming, I'll do a hot chocolate with a cacao powder and a little tiny drizzle of either maple or honey to sweeten it up.
I'm always happy to help someone in distress and my reward for doing so is a bag of top quality cacao beans-something I have to collect as part of my challenge.
Most of these claims involve flavonoids, a class of compounds found in lots of plants including cacao, the plant whose seeds are used to make cocoa and chocolate.