Cacao- Jamaica Plain
All chocolate lovers need to head over to Cacao now!!! This is not a drill!
There is a new chocolate shop in Jamaica Plain, Boston and they go by the name Cacao. This shop is a dream come true for a chocolate lover. Cacao sells roasted nuts, chocolate covered nuts, prepacked chocolate bars, and a wide variety of chocolate treats, BUT, they sell more than just chocolate. At Cacao you can also find dried fruits, organic honey, and cacao juice.
The owner and his family have a cacao farm in the Dominican Republic and he imports his chocolate from that farm. Throughout the shop you will find pictures of the cacao farm and his family working on the farm on the walls. The owner makes it a point to display the process of getting chocolate so that his customers understand where their chocolate is coming from. Typically, when we buy items we only see the final product and we do not get the opportunity to understand how this final product came to be. Through the pictures on the wall you are able to see that chocolate making is a long process, and definitely not an easy one. However, once you look at all of the products that are available in the shop you start to see all that can be done with chocolate and how much fun you can have with it.
During my visit I had the pleasure of trying and bringing home a bag of roasted cinnamon almonds. I never knew almonds could be this delicious and addicting until I tried the almonds at Cacao. They had the perfect balance of the sweetness of the cinnamon and the nuttiness of the almond. The roasted cinnamon almonds were so addicting that I wish I had bought five, or even ten more bags to take with me. One just wasn’t enough. That’s also because once I brought the one bag home everyone and their momma decided that they suddenly loved almonds.
However, I’m patiently waiting on the day that Cacao releases their website and starts shipping their products to New York.
Another star at this chocolate shop was an unexpected one; cacao juice. Cacao juice is made from the pulp of the cacao. This juice is all natural and has no added sugar, and apparently it cannot be found anywhere else at the moment (as per the owner). Cacao juice tasted absolutely nothing like chocolate. Instead, it had a bold, fruity and sweet taste. I definitely think if you ever have the opportunity to try cacao juice you should, because you will never taste anything thing like it.
If you love chocolate, then head over to Cacao and support this local businessman and his cacao farm.
