All About Chocolate

All About Chocolate

Introduction People around the world love chocolate. They love it so much that every year they eat more chocolate than any other sweet. If you have ever wondered where chocolate comes from and how it's made, then read on.

Where Chocolate Comes From Chocolate actually grows on trees. But you can't just pick a chunk of chocolate from a tree branch and eat it. The chocolate growing on trees looks, tastes, and smells nothing like the chocolate you eat. The tree that gives us chocolate is the cacao (kah-KOW) tree. Chocolate comes from beans that are found in large pods on the tree. Cacao trees grow where it is hot and wet. Mostly, they grow near the equator. It takes four to five years before a cacao tree begins to grow pods.

Today, most cacao trees are grown on farms called plantations. Cacao trees have lots of small white or yellow flowers. Some of the flowers change into pods, but most do not.

The pods are shaped like little footballs. Workers trim the branches to get the most pods from the trees. The pods change from green to a golden or reddish color as they ripen.

Preparing the Beans Taking ripe pods from the cacao trees is the first step in making chocolate. Inside each pod are 20 to 50 beans. The cacao beans are the tree's seeds. It takes a lot of beans and a lot of work to make chocolate. The pods are first gathered and then cut open with a large blade.