Walk into any health food store and you'll find cacao in a dozen different forms. They all start in the same place, the seed of the Theobroma cacao pod, but how that seed is handled changes the flavour, the nutrition and the best way to use it. Here's a simple guide to what's what.
Cacao fruit and pulp
Inside every cacao pod, the seeds sit in a sweet, white pulp that tastes a little like lychee and mango. Traditionally it was eaten fresh or fermented into drinks. Today the pulp can be gently concentrated into a syrup, like our Cacao Fruit Nectar, a naturally sweet alternative to honey.
Cacao beans
The seeds themselves. Once harvested they are usually fermented and dried, which develops the familiar chocolate flavour. Some ancestral varieties are kept raw and unfermented for a brighter, fruitier taste.
Cacao nibs
Beans that have been shelled and broken into small pieces. Crunchy and bitter, they're great sprinkled over smoothie bowls, porridge or baking.
Cacao paste (ceremonial cacao)
Whole beans ground into a smooth liquor and set into blocks or drops. Nothing is removed, so you get all the cacao butter and all the cacao solids together. This is the form used for ceremonial and daily cacao drinks. Our range includes Shansho (raw and unfermented), Uturunku and Amaru, each from a different ancestral variety. Drops are easy to measure out; blocks are great value if you drink cacao every day.
Cacao butter
The natural fat pressed out of cacao paste. It's pale, creamy and smells gently of chocolate. Use it to make your own chocolate, add richness to drinks, or in skincare. Try our Organic Cacao Butter Drops.
Cacao powder
What's left after most of the butter has been pressed out, ground into a fine powder. It's lower in fat and easy to stir into baking and smoothies, but it lacks the rich, full-bodied feel of paste. Cacao powder is minimally processed; cocoa powder is usually roasted at higher temperatures and often alkalised ("Dutch processed"), which reduces many of the natural compounds. You can read more in Cacao vs Cocoa and Paste vs Powder.
Cacao husk
The thin papery shells removed from the beans. Steeped in hot water they make a light, chocolate-scented tea.
Chocolate
Cacao paste mixed with extra butter, sweetener and sometimes milk. Quality varies hugely. Our Gut Happy Chocolate is 70% ancestral cacao sweetened with yacon, with no refined sugar.
Which should you choose?
- For a daily or ceremonial cacao drink: cacao paste (blocks or drops).
- For baking and smoothies: cacao powder or nibs.
- For making your own chocolate or skincare: cacao butter.
- For a sweet treat: a good dark chocolate, or a spoon of cacao fruit nectar.
Explore our full range of ancestral cacao, sourced directly from farming families in Peru and shipped Australia-wide.
