Make Chocolate From Your Backyard TREES

One cacao tree book

Learn how to make chocolate from tree-to-bar and beyond. Covering topics of growing & harvesting, simple tiny fermentations, and chocolate & confections making, this book will bring more cacao into your life. It is written by a home grower in Hawai’i with small scale cacao tree growers and amateur chocolate makers in mind.

 

Inside you will find:

• savory and sweet recipes
• ways to ferment a tiny amount of cacao seeds
• a primer on basic chocolate making skills
• tips for tempering chocolate in a tropical climate
• inspiration for using locally grown ingredients
• guidance to tasting chocolate
• encouragement to experiment and play

One Cacao Tree book cover

hand with cacao pod

dipping bonbon in tempered chocolate

 

 

JOIN the tiny batch tribe!

You can make delicious chocolate with just a few cacao pods. I’ll show you how.

buy the book

One Cacao Tree: A Guide to Backyard Cocoa, Tiny Fermentations, and Chocolate Making in the Tropics can be purchased directly from the author at Made With Molecules or Etsy. For more delivery options, you can purchase through Lulu Press, an eco-friendly B-Corp. Find it in person on the Big Island at Basically Books (Hilo), Island Naturals (Hilo), The Locavore Store (Hilo), Mahi’ai Made (Hilo), The Hive (Honomu), Kohala Grown (Hawi), and Kona Bay Books (Kona); on O’ahu at Down to Earth Mo’iliili and Kaka’ako; and in San Francisco at Omnivore Books and Dandelion Chocolate.

Available in Ebook format at Google Play.

Subscribe

I post extra information on growing and processing cacao on my free SubStack site. Subscribe to receive updates in your email inbox. Expect tips, recipes, and experimentation. Be the first to know about news, like class offerings.

Extras: Fermentation Record

Print and fill out this free 4-page PDF form to help keep track of the many parameters of your small cacao harvest, ferment, and drying. You don’t have to fill it out completely, just keep track of the parameters important to you. Print extra copies of any page as you need. Keep track of your cacao adventures!

 

 

CHAPTER List

  1. Introduction 
  2. One Cacao Pod 
  3. Tree to Bar Chocolate 
  4. Growing & Harvesting 
  5. Unfermented
  6. Fermenting
  7. Drying
  8. Roasting & Winnowing 
  9. Grinding 
  10. Tempering In the Tropics 
  11. Molding and Dipping 
  12. Flavor & Tasting 
  13. A Bad Batch? 
  14. Canoe Plants 
  15. Rituals

young cacao leaves

people cracking cacao pods with kei truck

cacao bean fermentation in jar

drying cacao beans with hen

chopped chocolate

hexagon chocolate bar

“ My favorite book on chocolate and cacao ever.” – Mackenzie Rivers, MAP Chocolate and The Next Batch chocolate school

 

Thanks to this book, my cacao ferments are no longer moldy.” – Erin, home cacao grower, Pāhoa, HI

 

I’ve owned the book less than a week, and I’ve already almost read it cover-to-cover… and I never do that!” Andrew, farmer in Hakalau, HI

 

Order this book! If you love chocolate, there’s always something new to learn. Not just for chocolate makers! An approachable, fun softcover book where the aloha spirit spills out the moment you open the cover.” – Barb Genuario, @chocochaser on Instagram

 

I’ve been captivated. It’s a great resource… There’s a personal intimacy… and there’s a lot of technical detail, but it’ not overwhelmingly technical.” – Clay Gordon, The Chocolate Life

 

Wow! What an awesome book! I read it cover to cover… I have a newfound appreciation for chocolate making. I especially loved the different recipes for making things at every stage of the process and utilizing much of the pod along the way. While I likely won’t be making tree to treat chocolates, it did open my eyes to what chocolate actually is.”  – Brandon, chocolate-eater in Seattle, WA

 

a tree-to-bar chocolate making guide for those of us lucky enough to grow cacao at home

About the Author

Raven Hanna is passionate about growing and processing food in her yard on Hawai’i Island. For over a decade, she has held a special fondness (obsession?) for growing cacao and making chocolate from scratch. Hands-on experimentation combined with knowledge learned from the experts in the field has allowed her consistently yield great results from very tiny cacao fermentations. With no book available for people who want to make chocolate from their own cacao trees, she thought she would share her methods and recipes in a book. Her day job is making molecule-themed jewelry at Made With Molecules.

Raven is available for online classes and tastings. Email Raven

Woman with cacao pod and ferment