Stephanie Villegas uses a traditional comal to roast cacao while carefully tending to the fire. (Nalani Hernandez-Melo / For De Los) Making chocolate is a sacred process, particularly for descendants ...

Cacao is a fruit that grows on the Theobroma cacao tree, blooming in scattered areas from its trunk and mid branches. The fruit is large and oblong; it looks similar to an American football, with a ...

On a Friday evening in late August, my husband and I stumbled upon a sandwich board on Hardwick’s Main Street that promised “Chocolate Upstairs.” We did what any chocolate lovers would do: We opened ...

The terms “cacao” and “cocoa” are frequently used interchangeably, but they refer to different stages in the cacao bean’s processing. Cacao is the raw, minimally processed form, retaining higher ...

What are cocoa nibs? In brief, they're a cacao bean product worth exploring. True, chocoholics with a serious sweet tooth might give them a hard pass, but home cooks and bakers who adore the bitter ...

Any chocolate lover can probably tell you that cacao is the most important ingredient in any chocolate confection. But not only does cacao hold the key to chocolate’s rich and seductive flavor but it ...

No one would blame you for thinking cocoa and cacao are the same food with different spellings. Both smell and taste unmistakably like dark chocolate. But they’re actually quite different products, ...

It seems like pretty much everyone is a chocolate person around Valentine's Day—chocolate desserts, chocolate-dipped strawberries, heart-shaped boxes of chocolate everywhere you look—but there are ...