Chocolate fruit
Saturday August 10th 2024, 9:50 pm
Filed under: Food

It’s become a tradition: before Michelle flies off we go to Dandelion Chocolate in San Francisco, and with their new early-morning hours we had the place to ourselves at 8:30 a.m.

They currently have a crisp almond pastry with a filling made from the juicy part of the cacao fruit, which as I understand it typically dries out during the fermenting process with the beans. They describe it as tasting somewhat like lychee–which I love but would never dare try again after having a near-anaphylactic reaction to its cousin, rambutan. From cacao? That I could do.

And now I want to find a source of that (if there is one for people who aren’t chocolate manufacturers) because it was very very good.


2 Comments so far
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Oh, that’s wild! I always assumed that there was a Reason we threw away the fruit part of cacao, but apparently that reason was probably more due to transport/storage and how much easier it is to get the cacao seeds out when you ferment away the fruit and how much cheaper it is to just haul the cacao, rather than because the fruit is somewhere between inedible and… uh… unimpressive.

Comment by KC 08.11.24 @ 8:09 am

Fascinating!

Comment by ccr in MA 08.11.24 @ 1:21 pm



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