[Fruity Fruits music] Greetings my beautiful lovelies! Its Emmy. Welcome back to another episode of Fruity Fruits where I taste fruits that are fruity. Now today I'm gonna be tasting a fruit that I'm so excited about. It came in my mystery box of fruits. If you haven't seen that video, I will put the link up above and down below. But it is this: and this is a cocoa or cacao pod. This is where chocolate is born. I am so excited about this -- I've never actually seen one of these in real life, but inside of this contains cocoa beans which need to be processed, of course, and then it turns, of course, into chocolate one of my most favourite things in the entire world. So before the beans even start to get processed and turned into chocolate, there is a little bit of a membrane that surrounds each bean, and that is actually edible and supposedly quite tasty. So that's what I'm going to be tasting today. So then I'm gonna begin the process of transforming this into a bar of chocolate. Another really interesting thing I discovered about the cocoa pod is that it grows from the trunk of the tree, rather than growing from some kind of vine or branch. So what's the difference between cocoa and cacao? I've heard both. And, apparently, it's about etymology. I guess cocoa spelled "c-o-c-o-a," comes from the word cacao.... So cacao is native to the Amazon basin and it was domesticated over 4000 years ago by the Olmecs and Mocayas from Mexico and Central America. And it was used in a lot of traditional ceremonies. So let's go ahead and open this! So I've seen a few different ways to open this -- I think the most common way, especially if you're producing chocolate and you're trying to do this quickly, is just to take a mallet and just bash the pod right in in the middle, and it kind of just splits and cracks, and then you can remove the pods. But I'm gonna try to do it a little bit more elegantly with a knife. This rind is quite thick... so I'm just gonna go around -- I'm just following a natural kind of... line in the pod itself. And then just match it on the other side. Now the scientific name for a cocoa pod is Theobroma cacao. All righty. Here we go. Oh Oh my gosh! So coo! It's like an alien! Ohh! There's some of it. I wish it could've opened cleaner than that, but I think we'll get it. Look at that! Oh! Doesn't smell like chocolate at all. Oh boy! Smells kind of floral. Oh boy, this is great! The outside's kind of woody, and a little bit brittle. And look at the... pods there. Look, there's one that popped out already! Okay, there it is. That's so cool! Oh my gosh, look at that! Isn't that incredible?! Let's see if we can get this whole section to come out. Look at that. Oh my gosh, that's so awesome! Look at that. I love it! I love it. It almost looks like a pinecone or something. It smells a little bit like Raid actually which is disconcerting. It smells a little bit like Raid, and flowers. And when I say Raid, I mean like ant spray Raid: astringent; it smells slightly chemicaled; and floral. Hmm.... Not exactly pleasant, but odd. Okay. Now what's this part smell like? Yeah, it has that smell too. Hmm... All righty, so let's dissect this. So here are the beans -- and they're encased in this kind of membranous, white fleshy substance. And the beans that are inside of this is what we want to keep to make the chocolate. But, apparently, this membranous stuff is edible. So let's give that a taste. Here we go. Itadakimasu! Wha!!! That's wild. It has a great, tangy-tart fruity flavor to it. Mm-hm. It's kind of mucilaginous: a little bit slimy. It's more of a flavor than anything of substance. You can't really chew anything -- you're kind of just swishing the slimy thing around in your mouth. And it's kind of tangy and fruity. That Raid smell/flavor that I was talking about still is there, but it doesn't taste bad. It's just more sour. Hmm.... Mm. So now that I've kind of munched that off, you can see the bean that's actually inside. Here is the cocoa bean that's inside. Rather than peeling this all off, what you do next is you take these mucilaginous kind of bean pod things and put them in something, and allow them to sit and ferment. So what do I mean by fermenting? Well bacteria and yeasts start to break down this outer membrane which makes it a lot easier to remove, and then we can move on to the next step which is to roast the beans. So, yeah, let me taste another one of these... It's actually pretty good. It's very tangy and intense -- kind of like what I associate with passion fruit: very tart, but the flavor is not as floral; the texture might be off-putting for some because it's quite slimy, but I don't mind: slippery, slimy; and there's really not much there to chew -- kind of just swishing the pod around in your mouth... So what I really appreciate about this is it's really tangy and sour -- almost as intense as, say, like a Sour Patch Kid. The flavor is interesting: slightly floral, not really fruity -- it's more like when you crack open a pumpkin, like when you're about to cut open a jack-o'-lantern, that kind of strong kind of raw squashy kind of flavor/smell, that's what it's like. Mm-hm. A little bit better than Raid ant spray, I'd say. And we want only the cocoa beans -- we don't want this kind of central membranous part here.... this kind of veiny stuff. Now, I don't know if this is going to be enough to make a chocolate bar -- I'm just gonna do a very small batch, but I'm gonna attempt to see if this is going to be enough. Now I'm gonna place these into a jar.... I'm gonna put a lid on this, and I'm gonna let it sit at room temperature in a dark area for four or five days -- I'm going to check on it, and at that point it should start to smell a little bit vinegary -- that means the bacteria are starting to break down the fruit on the outside. And then we'll clean them off; and then we'll move on to the next step which will be roasting; and then we'll continue to grind. So yeah, look for the whole video of how to transform a cacao bean into a bar of chocolate. I am so excited! Alrighty, thank you guys so much for joining me. I hope you guys enjoyed that one! I hope you guys learned something; please share this video with your friends; follow me on social media; check out the Fruity Fruits playlist; and LIKE and SUBSCRIBE; and I shall see you in the next one! Toodaloo! Take care! Bye!!!! Set. Hut, hut!!
