Ooooooh…look at these…Cacao Butter Cookies made from Cacao Butter and topped with whole roasted Balam (Mayan White Cacao) beans. There is not much to say except…yum!! And, look at my gallery of pictures to entice your senses and fill yourself with the wonders of cacao.
The pulp was removed from the balam beans, sun-dried and then roasted whole. The paler ones were lightly roasted and the darker ones were medium roasted.
Hello Everyone!! Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) will be holding their annual organic fair at PG park today (31st October 2015). We will be there armed with our Casa Mascia Goodies.
This one is always a favourite at fairs: Cheap Sale (or Runaway Sale or Explosive-One-Time-Only Sale or Everything-Must-Go-Sale!!
Come and rummage through our bargain box: there will be all sorts of exciting things (exclusive once off) like Cacao and Lemongrass Insect Repellent, Lavender balm, Grapefruit Balm, Tooth-powder or Tooth-whitener with lovely essential oils and lots more. You can’t beat a bargain!
We will also be selling fresh Balam (Mayan White Cacao) fruit for all you organic gardeners out there.
We will have our usual favourite stuff including Copal Soap, Medicinal Oils and Ointments. Oh, and two buckets of Chocolate Artisan Soap going at a Run-away Price of $5.00 (Best Price, as they say here in Belize)!!
Hope to see y’all there. Otherwise, if you are not in Belize, we’ll have lots of fun photos for laterz.
The Mayan Cacao Fruit Balam is now in season. We have a few trees on the farm and this year they have been very generous.
This is Theobroma bicolor which is different from the Theobroma cacao in appearance and taste.
The Mayan cacao is also called “Balam” and it produces white beans as opposed to black/purplish beans of the normal variety of cacao. The pulp around the beans taste of sweet musk melon.
We have had such an abundant crop that we have been eating the fruit everyday; it is really nice chilled in the refrigerator for a couple of hours…it really brings out the strong fruity flavour.
We also make a Balam Elixir with the pulp of this fruit. The maturation process brings out the muskiness of the fruit and the end product tastes like a fragrant whisky.
This is a picture of the Mayan Cacao which is called Balam in Toledo, Belize. The latin name is Theobroma bicolor; it is an unusual variety because the beans are actually white (as opposed to black/purple) and its pulp has a strong, pungent smell and taste. September to November is the usual harvest time and we are collecting them from our trees right now. They are usually ready when they fall off the tree and the fruit starts showing a yellow tinge. The fruit is esteemed by the Mayans here and they like to grind the fermented cacao beans to make a chocolate drink; in fact, they think the taste of this bean is better that the normal chocolate bean (theobroma cacao).
Toledo is hailed as a good cultivation area for cacao plantations; local farmers have been encouraged to plant normal cacao for international chocolate companies. The current feeling on this “White Cacao” amongst the chocolate-making community is that it is not a variety that imparts a taste familiar to high standard chocolate.
Well, I don’t really care about what top chocolatiers think because I like to eat and experiment with everything we have on the farm and I am not swayed by fads and fashion. Right now, we are drying and fermenting some beans out in the sun with a view to making our own home-made chocolate. I will keep you posted on what happens to our white chocolate. As an interesting aside, the pulp of the cacao has characteristic aromas similar to jack fruit (and durian) and because I like oriental smells, I think it is intensely fragrant and tasty.
