Cacao Recipes: Our Favorite Ways to Use Cacao

From a life hack perspective, nearly everyone agrees that putting cacao into your body is one of the most effective things a person can do in terms of nutrition, for all of the reasons covered in this article. Cacao is effectively a healthy and wildly-effective drug. The question now is: what’s the best delivery system?

There are plenty of different ways to prepare cacao. This gives you a lot of freedom to find the recipe that best fits with your nutritional regimen and flavor preferences, ranging from morning smoothies and mocha-style coffee to keto-friendly power drinks and non-dairy renditions of classic hot chocolate. The selection we offer below is just the tip of the iceberg in the realm of cacao-based foods and drinks.

• Brewed Cacao: Use a French Press to brew cacao instead of (or with) coffee. For one serving, combine 2 big tablespoons of cacao powder with 1 cup of water. Stir and steep for 10 minutes. You can also use a Moka Pot. Coffee filtration methods that use paper filters are not recommended because the filter tends to get clogged.

• Cacao Latte: For one serving, combine 2/3 cup of milk, non-dairy plant milk, or water with 2 big tablespoons of cacao powder. Use a milk frother, saucepan, and/or blender to heat and mix. Adjust the ratio according to preference.

• Optional Flavorings: To any of the above recipes, add honey or preferred sweetener, cinnamon, vanilla, turmeric, cayenne pepper, or chili powder.

• Keto Add-On: To any of the above recipes, add 1 tablespoon of coconut oil, MCT oil, and/or grass-fed butter. 

• Mocha Coffee: Add 1 big tablespoon of cacao powder to your cup of coffee.

• Smoothie Boost: Add 1-2 big tablespoons to your smoothie. This is a no-brainer.

• Granola Boost: Add 1-2 big tablespoons to your morning bowl of fruit and granola.

• Yogurt Replacement: For those of you who love to eat fruit and granola in the morning, but want to avoid dairy, here you go! Put fruit and granola in a bowl and pour your Cacao Latte over it, like a yogurt. If you do this when the Cacao Latte is still hot, it lightly cooks the fruit, and brings out a new range of flavors. For this reason, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, or peaches are the best choice for fruit, because they taste nice when lightly cooked. 

• Jerry's Backwoods Cacao Brew (aka "Chocolate Jama-Coaque"): This weird recipe deserves an entire blog post of its own, which you can read here. 

No, this is not me. I'm actually not sure who this is.  

Classic Drinking Chocolate

All of the above recipes are best-suited for our 100% Full Spectrum Cacao Powder. For proper drinking chocolate, we recommend our Classic Drinking Chocolate, which is finished chocolate (usually in the range of 73-80% cacao) that has been ground into a fine powder. Some of our drinking chocolate editions have been aged in specialty casks (eg, Don Julio Tequila and Woodford Reserve Bourbon).  

Preparation: For best results, use a milk frother. Otherwise, a saucepan also works well. Add ground chocolate to your choice of milk, cream, non-dairy plant milk, or water. Heat and mix together until frothy, and then serve.

• European-Style: For small rich servings with thick consistency, combine 1/3 cup of preferred liquid with 2 generous tablespoons of Classic Drinking Chocolate. If you have small coffee cups or espresso-style cups, this is a great opportunity to put them to use.

• American-Style: For moderate-sized servings with moderate consistency, combine 1/2 cup of preferred liquid with 2 generous tablespoons of Classic Drinking Chocolate. Serve in traditional-size coffee mugs.

• Extreme Decadence: Choose half-and-half or heavy cream as the liquid. In this case, it’s best to use “European-style” serving sizes.

• A note about additives: There is no need to add any additional sweetener or other flavoring—this is meant to be enjoyed as a pure drinking chocolate. However, feel free to play around with it and add whatever you wish. Some flavoring options include cinnamon, vanilla, turmeric, cayenne pepper, or chili powder.

• Spike it: You can also spike it with rum, whisky, or tequila, among other spirits...or not. Your call.