[Sca-cooks] cacao nibs

Dragon dragon at crimson-dragon.com
Mon Aug 25 00:10:20 PDT 2008


Stefan li Rous did speak thusly:
>While we were dropping by Whole Foods today, I saw a 8 oz.bag of
>cacao nibs and bought it.
>
>I also bought an 8 ox bag of chocolate covered cacao nibs. These I
>assume are to be eaten straight like candy.
>
>I had in mind using the cacao nibs to try some of the 16th century
>chocolate recipes. I have some of these recipes in the Florilegium. I
>don't know how far this bag will go, but a quick search on the web
>finds recipes for using cacao nibs in cookies and a few other items.
>I saw one mention of a steak seasoning that contained cacao nibs, I
>guess for a mole like taste.
>
>Does anyone have any good suggestions or recipes that they've made
>using cacao nibs?
---------------- End original message. ---------------------

Just be aware that they are very bitter and are not going to taste 
anything like what you think chocolate should taste like.

This does not mean they are "bad", just not what you are likely to 
expect. Remember that chocolate as we know it today is a very 
different product that is much more highly processed than it was when 
it was originally brought to Europe.

I have never personally used cacao nibs, I have tasted them, but I 
have yet to experiment. They are gritty in texture and like I said, 
very bitter but also very aromatic. A lot of the flavors we associate 
with chocolate are either not present in the nibs because they have 
not fully developed (they require further processing to come out) or 
they are subdued due to lack of sweetness and additional cocoa butter 
to transport them to the tongue.

One of these days I really want to make the Aztec version of 
chocolate with all of the "funky" ingredients they used just to see 
what it was really like.

Please share what you learn with us, I am interested and I am sure 
others are as well.

Dragon

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  Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)
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