Claude Has Flowered

It's been over eight years since I started growing cacao trees again.  My first attempt in 2014 wasn't so good, probably because I didn't have as much information on exactly what a cacao tree wanted for good growing conditions.

Claude has gone though several pot and dirt changes and additions over they years.  This little flower means he is getting the right light, water, and nutrients he wants to finally flower and one day fruit. I don't expect fruit for some time still.  This is the first flower and he will probably need another flowering cacao tree to produce fruit.  I say probably because the majority of cacao trees do not self pollinate even though they have both male and female portions to their flowers. There are some cacao trees that can pollinate themselves but it is much less common.  Is Claude one of these?  I have no idea.

Fortunately I have another cacao tree, Claudette.  She's like Claude but smaller.  I don't know if they are the same kind of cacao or not since I haven't seen either of them fruit yet.  The leaves of course are so similar that it wouldn't help.  I believe they were from the same purchase of pods but I got 4 different kinds of pods and planted almost all of the seeds.  Even then the cross pollination will give variants even in the same pod so there's that.

Long story short is that the long story of growing my own chocolate is still a long way from being realized.  This is only one of the many steps toward that goal.

If you look closely at the bud it almost looks like a cacao pod in miniature.  If it had been pollinated and this was a pod in progress it would be in this shape and keep getting bigger.  I was told that even when they are the size of a tennis ball they aren't considered fruit yet.  They are still just baby cherelle. It isn't until the fruit is almost full size before you can really expect it to succeed. Before that it could still just fall right off.

The color and shape of the pod are unique to each tree.  No two trees are exactly the same due to the cross pollination of trees to make more seeds and trees.  Trees next to each other may make very different pods but both could be ripe. One might need to turn red while another is ripe at yellow. This is where a farmer really has to know his trees.  The shape of the pods are also specific to the tree.  Anywhere from a little bigger than a softball to bigger than a football.  This is why the fruit grows on the trunk and not the branches as the weight would break off branches.

Harvesting fruit also has to be done by hand since you have to protect the pads where the fruit grows.  If damaged it could stop flowering from that pad for good.  There's another spot I'm watching that may produce flowers too but not sure yet.  There's something going on there at least.

Fermenting Cacao Day 12

Ok only two days since last I checked them but they seem ready.  Rinsed the cacao off from the pulp and sorted out the beans.  It took a few times rinsing them off to get the  water to be mostly clear.

There were a few that were not really developed.  They were mostly just empty shell.  A couple were spotty but cleaned up nicely so I'm not worried about it affecting the finished product.  Tossed the empty ones of course and used a paper towel to clean off those that needed it.

Now I'm going to pat them with paper towels and spread them out.  I'm not going to completely dry them this way but just enough to get the majority of goo off.  Then placing them on a cooling rack I use for cookies and such.  Thoroughly cleaned of course to make sure none of the odors transfer into the beans.  As mentioned before they will soak up odor and flavors like sponges.  This also means no heavy cooking since the spices will get into the air.

Fermenting Cacao Day 10

Ten days in and the mass is getting more homogenous. The bubbles are getting smaller as they have more room to spread out.  Previously the mass was chunky and not entirely broken down yet.  Now there is more of a sauce consistency that the beans are fermenting in.

I took one of the beans out to check on the color.  They're supposed to get a purplish tint to them as the beans chemically change.  The middle was about there but nearer the edge it still wasn't quite the color I wanted.

The aroma still hits you when you enter the room but it's starting to change slightly.  I want to get it before it gets what some people call the "pork" scent.  While cacao and meat do go well together, you don't want your chocolate bar tasting faintly like a hotdog.

I will probably be fermenting for another four to five days, checking regularly on it and making sure it's still going.  After that I'll be drying it, possibly outside some if I'm going to be home, otherwise I guess I'll have to do it on the counter.  The cooling racks should be good for that with the fan going so they don't start to mold.  Then off to the air fryer with the drum attachment.  The whole reason for getting that particular model was so I could roast cacao beans.  Have to make sure it's spotless though since we also cook other foods in there.  Cacao will soak up any odors from foods you have near it.  Onion chocolate anyone?  Didn't think so.

Fermenting Cacao

Went to the Dallas Chocolate Festival and got two pods and they already seemed to have started the process (still tasted good though).  So I decided to process them to see if I could get some chocolate out of them.

This is day one of the fermentation.  I'll need to add heat to it since it's not enough mass to maintain temperature while it processes.

Last time I did this it took almost two weeks but in the end it was just about right.  This time I'm documenting it better so that I can have a better idea of what happens and where I need to make adjustments.

Also this time I added a little sugar to the mix for the fermenting to have a little more to eat as it begins the process.

Ground Chocolate

This is coarse ground chocolate I have produces from the cacao pod I fermented and roasted.  This is not however all of the cacao nibs I made, only about a third of it.

This is much closer to how chocolate was originally used, pounded to a mass and added to whatever, usually a drink.  This however has sugar added and can be called about 70% dark chocolate.

It really does have a good flavor to it even if it is an extremely micro batch.  One of the things that contribute to flavor is the yeasts in the area it is fermented.  This is why I wanted to see how Texas chocolate would turn out before investing too much time or money in producing it in a larger scale.

Of course I will still have Claude no matter how things turn out.  He's got more leaves coming in again.  Yes, I said leaves as in plural.  There is a top leaf (height) coming in but there are also two side leaves coming in.  One of them has a very definite leaf shape and was the first to pop out.  They are at consecutive leaf points and about two thirds the way up the trunk.  Just saying trunk gives me chills.  He's an actual tree now with a thin bark.  So many of the other trees have not made it.  There are however several still at the office that are sprouting new leaves.  If all goes well they will be the other trees in the cacao orchard.

Back to the ground chocolate though.  I'm not sure I have enough to try to temper it.  We did kind of temper some ground chocolate once.  It had a snap but there was also more if it than this.  I'm afraid of scorching such a small amount.  Probably just eat it like this.  Maybe even as an ice cream topping.

Roasting Cacao

We began with the pod and decided to go all the way from pod to chocolate.  Fermenting was interesting since the mass couldn't hold the heat in for very long and often times I would end up holding the plastic bag they were fermenting in to give the yeast enough warmth to grow.  It took twice as long as it should usually take to ferment the beans but they ended up with a wonderful aroma.

Then we dried the beans and kept them sealed up so as not to absorb odors from anything in the kitchen we might be cooking or storing nearby.  For a little bit they were tossed in the freezer but this doesn't seem to have affected the final roast any.

While trying to figure out what to do at this point we weighed our options and the costs of those options.  We didn't want to try the oven again since it didn't work out so well the other times we tried it.  After some time we found that Pampered Chef had this air fryer that came with a rotating basket.  It looked almost exactly like some of the coffee roasters that were recommended to use to roast cacao beans.  Although not always in stock it was one of the items you could get half off if you threw a party and got enough sales.  So, for under $150 we got this and followed the recommendations in the Making Chocolate book by Dandelion Chocolate.  Looking back it could possibly have used another minute in the roaster but the fragrance is awesome.  As far as I know it's the only Texas fermented chocolate in existence as craft chocolate makers purchase beans that have already been fermented and dried.  Now all I have to do is get Claude (the cacao tree growing in my office) to produce pods and sugar from southeast Texas and I will then be able to produce a 100% Texas chocolate bar.

Cacao Tree Survival

In a presentation by Ben Rasmussen over at Potomic Chocolate, he gave a nice overview of what they do there and what got him into chocolate.  It's a story you will probably hear from most every craft chocolate maker if you talk to them long enough.  Craft chocolate is a passionate business and you don't stay in it simply for the money.

One of the things he brought out was his tree.  You could see it in the background of the video and it was a nice looking tree.  At one point though it had lost all of its leaves and was merely a twig sticking out of the ground.  Someone said that it wasn't necessarily lost though and to just keep it watered.  It may well grow back, and it did.

That's the same thing I have done with some of my trees.  They've had a rough beginning to some of them and, as you can see on this little guy, if you keep them watered they can indeed grow back.  He's even better looking now but this picture really shows how resilient a cacao tree can be.  Of course not all of the trees had this outcome.  Some of them really did die, shrivel up, fall over, and sink into a swamp.  We won't talk about those any further though.  This little guy is the bright spot in the whole tree growing process.  Of course he doesn't come close to Claude (my wife decided the largest and most healthy of the trees needed a name) who is now nearly as tall as I am.  Some day though, with proper care, he will be just as big.

Fake Chocolate (Chocoverse Book 3)

Not that I would ever give anyone real fake chocolate...

Ok, that sounded odd but you know what I mean.  This is the final book in the Chocoverse Trillogy!  Which makes this another in the great sci-fi trillogies (wiki pages to follow shortly). If you head on over to her Youtube channel you can also see a video of her discussing how actual craft chocolate makers from all over have influenced her in her writing, not only her sci-fi work but also the cookbook she co-authored,  and appreciation of fine chocolate in general.

The Chocoverse trilogy ends April 14. Bo's going home!  Welcome to the Chocoverse: Funny Space Opera with a little sweet romance . . . and a lot of chocolate.

Bienvenido a El Chocoverse. Divertida ópera espacial con un poco de romance. . . y mucho chocolate. El libro 3 ya casi está aquí. Free Chocolate. Pure Chocolate. Fake Chocolate. ¡Para salvar la Tierra, salva el chocolate!

Chocoverse page on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/The-Chocoverse-2-Book-Series/dp/B085DZ5BVQ

Fake Chocolate on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fake-Chocolate-Chocoverse-Book-III/dp/0991408349

Website: www.amberroyer.com

Corgi in Chocolate Trailer

This last weekend we ran the film end of the book trailer for Fake Chocolate.  For anyone who doesn't already know, this is book three of the Chocoverse series, written by my amazing wife, Amber Royer.  The first two books were published by Angry Robot Books out of London, England.  The third book is being Indie published to complete the trilogy so the fans that are out there won't be left disappointed with being left unfinished.  Fake Chocolate will release on April 14 with a party at Four Corners Brewery in Dallas, Texas.

Emma was probably the biggest diva of the group.  She only had about two hours of filming but she was determined to be the spotlight as long as she was there.  It didn't hurt that she was the most adorable ball of fur ever.  We went out to River Legacy in Arlington for the footage with Emma. and of course she found the water as soon as she got near the grassy areas.  The real conflict for her came when she had to decide between the ball and going up to new people to say hi.  Unfortunately for those folks the ball won out.  She really likes to chase them.

For those who haven't read the first two books yet, Emma was playing the part of Botas, the corgi Frank gets in the first book and the thing that helps you realize that maybe he's not such a bad guy after all.  Because how bad can a person be if he takes the time to make sure innocent pets don't get caught up in the mess us humans get ourselves into.  Botas also plays a role throughout the series in various ways.  Want to know more?  You can order the books from any convenient bookstore or if you can't wait then come to the launch party, there will be plenty of copies on hand.

Painting Chocolates

Painting some silicon chocolate molds this evening with my wife.  These I painted half red and put white on the little divot in the mold.  Otherwise it will look like a mistake instead of intentional design.

As we wait for them to dry though I remembered a lecture we went to about paintings.  Way back, canvases were so expensive paintings were often painted over with other paintings.  One such painting was found this way.  It had been seen as a background image in another work and was thought to have been made up until X-ray scans of another work revealed it had been painted over. In chocolate molds it would be the opposite since the first thing you will likely see, unless the chocolate is too hot and remedy’s everything, would be the paint that was put down first.  In this case I could wash over the entire heart with a third color after this one cools down and you would only see what hadn’t already been painted.

Cacao Repotted

We finally repotted the cacao tree into its own pot as well as several of the new saplings about ten days ago. Finally getting around to posting it's progress though and it has also topped three feet tall!  This little guy has really taken off compared to the other trees.

Another couple of inches and I'll remove the box it's sitting on so it can have more room above it and it will still be fairly close to the overhead light.  I want to keep that as constant as I can as it grows up.

I think I see a small side leaf poking out about seven leaves from the top.  Hopefully this is the first sign of it branching out.  This should be happening about now, if not sooner.  Two of the other trees already have side branches and are much smaller than this one so I wan't sure what to expect.

It's still a long way off until we can expect any pods though. A minimum of four more years I would expect.  Before that time comes I should have already repotted this guy again in something twice as wide and at least a foot and a half tall if not two feet. Still thinking on that one. Aesthetics vs. root space.  We'll see which one wins out.  A shorter pot is usually more common in an office environment and would give it more room to grow up but a taller pot would give it more room for root support for the grownt I hope it gets.  Hard to decide until I see how it goes.

On the side there you can see the vanilla plants.  They've gotten so long I've draped one of them over the cubicle wall and the other one you can see the pot.  They're now nearly ten times the size from the time I got them.  Faster growing than expected for such a sub par environment.  I have been misting them with water though so maybe that's helped more than I thought it would.

Cacao 30 Inch Goal

With the three new leaves coming in she's not topped 30 inches in height (measured from the top of the soil).

The pot on the right is where she used to sit and at this point, if she was still there, would be hitting the ceiling.   That should tell you how high the ceiling is from the comparison of heights.  Another 8-10 inches and I'll be lowering the pot again.  Currently she sits on two boxes which can easily be removed one at a time.

If you've been following this at all you can probably tell I still haven't repotted anything.  It's on my to do list.

That being said, the new saplings are doing pretty good. I have full confidence in about 24 of them and fairly sure 3 more will be ok.  A total of 27 out of 40 survivors of this last planting.  I a full grown tree can produce enough to make 2 pounds of chocolate a year that would be 54 pounds of chocolate or nearly 500 chocolate bars.  Still a very small batch compared to most but that would be kind of awesome.

Hot Cocoa Recipe

The weather has gotten colder (a nice cold front moved through DFW last night) and it's getting to be fall.  Which of course means hot beverages and soups.  We've probably all had a nice cup of cocoa on a chilly day but have you had a really good hot cocoa yet?

This is one that you can use Hershey's cocoa for.  Of course if you want to fancy it up any cocoa will do.  For me it isn't the cocoa but the milk that makes it better because frankly there's a lot more of it.  If you were on the other hand making drinking chocolate I'd suggest a nicer chocolate with a more complex flavor.

Here is my take on cocoa for the coming seasons.

Hot Cocoa

Take a tablespoon of both cocoa and sugar and mix them with as much whole milk (cold is ok but warmed milk will mix faster).

(People will tell you that 2% or skim milk will do, but not really unless your doctor says otherwise.)

Mix this together until it forms a thick consistent texture.  Let it sit for a few minutes so the sugar has some time to dissolve and the cocoa has time to absorb the liquid. Your mixture should thicken up quite a bit.  This will allow it to mix well with the rest of the milk when combined.

To prepare your milk, heat it on the stove on low to medium heat, depending on your stove, stirring constantly so it doesn't scald on the bottom.  When the milk gets steamy and starts to form little bubbles it's ready to mix. Depending on how rich you want the chocolate flavor you can mix anywhere between 4 and 8 ounces of milk into the chocolate.

Optionally you can add a little vanilla extract, peppermint oil, salt, or other additives to your taste.

Kit Kat’s

People here in the United States typically think of Kit Kat's to be something we alone eat and that it's only one of the many chocolate bars at your local convenience store.  If you'd like to try a variety of Kit Kat bars you can get them here.

This is much further from the truth than you might think.  We had known about the Japanese craze over Kit Kat's and just had to go see one of the stores for ourselves.  We found ourselves in Ginza for a little shopping and of course where we wanted to see the Kit Kat store.

We were a little overwhelmed, not because there was a great variety of products, but because the cost of getting Kit Kat's.  This isn't a convenience store.  This is Japanese people going nuts over a chocolate bar.

One of the things I realized much later and should have realized when I went in there in the first place is that most of the Kit Kat's were not milk or dark chocolate but white chocolate with flavorings. Lavender, Matcha, Lemon, Apple, and several others.  The reason I started thinking about this is because Ruby Chocolate (raw cacao bean flavored chcolate) was first sold as a Kit Kat bar.  Probably right along all these other flavored white chocolate bars.  It was the perfect starting ground.  They should rebrand matcha chocolate as Emerald Chocolate.  It would probably make just as big of a wave.

Ruby Chocolate

So what is this craze people are talking about?  I recently attended the 10th Dallas Chocolate Festival and more than one person asked me about this.  Fortunately I've had a little experience trying some of this elusive chocolate specifically at one of the book readings my wife had in Minneapolis at Maggers & Quinn this year as produced by Sweets Engineer.

My response was a less than glowing review.  It tastes ok but not really my thing.  The flavors really haven't been developed.  This is mostly because the beans haven't been fermented.  The red color comes from the natural color of the bean which is a darker form of the color you see.  The cocoa butter, sugar, and other ingredients that might be added to it lighten it to this reddish pink color you see in the picture or probably it's more accurate to say the cacao colors the other ingredients.  Really what you have is a colored white chocolate.  It would be interesting to know if the cocoa butter comes from the same beans.  I would be shocked if they were since the ruby beans are supposed to be so special.  Typically you add extra cocoa butter to chocolates.  So in this case that's a lot of extra cocoa butter.  Callebaut is claiming 47.3% cocoa content.  Looking further into it's ingredients shows 2.5% fat-free cocoa.  This would be your red cocoa bean with cocoa butter removed. So total cocoa butter would be (doing the math) 44.8% and still sugar is the #1 ingredient.

At the Dallas Chocolate Festival we took a chocolate making class where ruby chocolate was discussed briefly.  The consensus was that it wasn't necessarily bad but also wasn't real exciting to those giving the class or any of the participants who had tried it beforehand.

UTZ Certified Cocoa (What is it?)

It's another in a long list of companies and organizations that are all trying to make you feel better about the chocolate you are eating.

If you were told that your chocolate was grown by an aging man who can barely get by.  A man who uses old tools that should have been replaced years ago and who works twelve hours a day for barely enough to buy some of the things he can't get locally or make on his own.  Who's children work along side him and at the end of the day still have never even tasted the final product we know as chocolate, a substance that often gets thrown away by those who don't know any better when they see a white dusting look on the outside (still perfectly good chocolate).  A family sleeping in conditions that we wouldn't force our dog to sleep in.  Then you might be a bit outraged and demand someone do something about it.

What you get is these companies that will tout all they have done to improve the industry and the relationships from farmer to product.  How much does this really affect the product in the end. Almost none.  In the end what you get is to feel better about eating a product even if you have no real proof of any tangible improvement overall.  Not saying these people are evil or taking advantage of anyone.  They may well be trying their best to improve conditions of the farmers and the methods they use for producing and harvesting.

UTZ does not just deal with cacao farmers though.  They do coffee, tea, cacao, and even nut production.  That's pretty thin to spread any company.

What about companies that aren't part of this UTZ certification?  Are they necessarily bad companies? If you look at some of the bean to bar makers I don't find any of them that have this certification but they're doing much of the same things on a much more manageable scale.  They many times go personally to the farmers and not only help them produce better cacao crops but know the people that are working for these plantations.  Is this any better of a guarantee that everything is on the up and up. Maybe a little but really after they leave there's still no micromanaging of these places.  You really can't tell what goes on after visitors leave.  They do claim to pay better than the bigger chocolate companies though and if so that at least would be a big boost to their ability to live better.  Note that these certifications also only cover one single ingredient of the chocolate which can easily have a dozen or more ingredients from various sources, none of which might be certified in any way.

I have to say that I don't think my little forest will ever be certified by anyone. Many much larger farms and plantations also don't get certifications such as organic, not because they don't or couldn't, but because the cost of certification isn't worth it.  So don't knock a company just because there isn't a certification since all that really means is that at some point (hopefully regularly) someone who was given authority went there and checked certain aspects of the company/place being certified.

Another note.  The wording of certifications and claims might not be what you expect.  The names of these certifications usually sound better than what actually happens.  If you want food just like it came naturally then you would have all sorts of blemishes, bugs, and smaller crops.  Everyone uses some form of chemical on their crops if they have any real scale to their operations, even organic.

There Are Herbs In My Chocolate - Cover Reveal

My wife and I are releasing the new expanded and revised version of There Are Herbs In My Chocolate, a cookbook we originally made for supplementing her lectures aboard Royal Caribbean cruises.  Because even the Olympic athlete who was doing performances on stage had a workout video they were selling.

We're happy to have added about 30 recipes and have given it an updated feel.  We have included one of my favorites, a chocolate pear tart with sweet dough crust.  The crust was a recipe handed down from my grandmother and, when I was growing up, was used only for special occasions.  Of course I give ALL the correct ingredient amounts.

The book is available for preorder on any of the sites listed here and it will be coming out on May 7th. We hope you are as excited to try some of the recipes, all tested by us (one recipe didn't make it into the book, it was just bad).

Pure Chocolate Launch Party

Speaking of chocolate...

This coming Tuesday night at 7:30 at Bitter Sisters Brewery in Addison, Texas, my wife is having her book party for her second novel in the Chocoverse series, Pure Chocolate.

She'll be there reading an excerpt from her novel as well as signing copies of her book which can be preordered through Interabang Books.

Yelibelly Chocolates will also be out there doing a hands on truffle rolling demonstration and helping to put together a chocolate and beer pairing, available at the bar.

Top it off with some free cake and you're sure to have a great time.

Cacao Grove

Started new cacao seeds again  I just couldn't keep the other ones alive for some reason.  As you can tell though these are doing even better than the last ones.  I'm afraid I'll have to thin them again soon. I already took two out of this pot and sent them one cubicle over.  I think the more water the better at this stage at least.  Watering them from the bottom tray and just letting the plants soak it up.

The spacers are so the little guy underneath all the leaves has a chance to get some light and hopefully get bigger.  He'll probably be next to leave the pot and find a new home since his roots are probably also a bit more compact.  We'll see how that goes when the time comes.

Decided to use Ozarka spring water as well to hopefully get some natural nutrients into the mix.  Will have to see how that goes.  So far though compared to the two plants that, as stated earlier, are already a cubicle over, which get tap water, the original pot seems to be doing a little better.  Hopefully this trend will keep up.  If so then he might switch to spring water as well.

Cacao Saplings

Well, it's been 7 months now and the cacao hasn't died on me yet.  It was a little iffy for a while when each plant only had one leaf for a while but they've pulled through that and are on their way to becoming the trees they should be.  The largest leaf is already about half as long as the plant itself and it's finally maturing.  The leaves grow fairly soft and limber until they're done growing.  At that point the get stiffer and pull up to join the rest of the leaves.

Of course everyone wants chocolate but it will be some time before these guys could support pods.  In the meantime you can always go get Amber's upcoming book Free Chocolate coming out June 5, 2018 from Angry Robot Books.  Or, if you're in the Dallas area, stop by Interabang Books on June 7, 2018 for the book launch starting at 7:00pm.  There WILL be chocolate.