From trees to treat, chocolate a tricky sweet

Sensuous, delicious and good for you, too — that’s chocolate! Lucky you live Hawaii where the cacao tree, the basis of delectable chocolate, is grown.

Cacao trees like deep soil, a little shade and a good amount of rain. The trees produce thousands of flowers that must be pollinated to form a cacao pod, an unlikely candidate for something so delicious. Inside the colorful pod is a bunch of beans surrounded by a white fleshy pulp; fermentation must occur to develop the flavor of the bean.

Sun-drying the beans is another step in flavor development, then roasting and conching, the process of blending with sugar and other ingredients to form edible chocolate. It’s amazing that someone figured out this process!

Cacao is grown throughout the state but processed commercially into chocolate at only one location in Hawaii: the Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory in Kona on Hawaii island. This chocolate is available at small retailers throughout the state.

Cacao grown in Waialua on Oahu is processed at Guittard Chocolate Co. of San Francisco into Waialua Estate Chocolate, available at the Dole Plantation store and many other Oahu locations.

Malie Kai uses Waialua Estate chocolate to make its chocolate bars available throughout the state and at Oahu farmers markets.

Hawaii is the only state in the U.S. that produces chocolate. How delectable is that?

Hawaii food writer Joan Namkoong offers a weekly tidbit on fresh seasonal products, many of them locally grown.