Although most harvesting is done in the fall, December was the best time for employees at the Huntington Museum of Art to start picking fruits off its tropical cacao plant.
ƵOur cacao tree flowers from about April until August, September, sometime around there Ƶ we have a long flowering window Ƶ and then it takes the pods probably about three or four months to ripen. So we had a lot of them ripening around this time around Christmas, and thatƵs pretty typical, with it flowering all summer,Ƶ Conservatory Director Joshua Hamrick said.
Hamrick said employees began harvesting the fruit around the first week of December, yielding about 62 plants before cutting and scooping out the contents to begin the process of making chocolate.
ƵWe had a pretty good year for the cacao. So sometimes I just pick off one pod at a time and IƵll sample the fruit with people. ThatƵs what I do a lot of when we donƵt have a lot of fruit and a few ripe ones,Ƶ Hamrick said. ƵBut several of the staff were interested in making chocolate this year ... we had a good harvest, so we decided to just try it out and do it.Ƶ
Employees started the two-week process by scooping and massing the contents of cacao pods together.
The actual cacao nib, or the seed and its surrounding pulp, is fruity, with a taste like mango and apple that Hamrick likened to paw paw fruit. The inside, the seed, is more bitter and full of antioxidants.
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