Black Onyx Cocoa Powder

Description

Have you ever wanted to bake a cake as dark as your soul? Here you will find Black Onyx Cocoa Powder, the very ingredient you have been searching for. This extremely alkalized cocoa powder is as dark as the night and will make anything it touches that deeply colored, too. 

Theobroma cacao, which translates directly to “food of the gods,” is the scientific name for the cacao tree. It comes from the family Malvaceae. This tree produces cacao pods from which cocoa beans are harvested and then pulverized to become cocoa powder. The cocoa powder is further processed with an alkaline solution to give it this rich coloring. 

Onyx is pronounced “AH-nix.” You may find this referred to as Super Alkalized Cocoa Powder, Black Cocoa Powder, Onyx Cocoa Powder, Cocoa Noir, or Extra Dutch Cocoa Powder.

History of Black Onyx Cocoa Powder

Cacao beans are extremely important throughout history. This tiny seed was considered a source of power by ancient civilizations like the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs. The Aztecs used cocoa beans as currency because the people believed the seeds were gifts from the god of wisdom, Quetzalcoatl. Rulers used to drink liquids made with the beans in small amounts frequently over the course of the day to increase their stamina, happiness, and focus. The word chocolate is thought to come from the Classical Nahuatl word chicolatl, which entered the Spanish language as chocolate and then came to English from the Spanish language with just slight variation of pronunciation. Originally chocolate was served only as a drink made from the crushed cacao nibs. 

Columbus is the first European documented to have encountered cocoa beans on August 15th of 1502. His son Ferdinand had accompanied him on his last journey to the Americas and documented most of their trip and experience in writings. The writings from this date claim that the locals were extremely careful with their cocoa beans, using them similarly as the Aztecs had, as currency. 

The famed conquistador Hernán Cortés used the drink concocted from the ground cocoa beans and local spices as a part of his soldiers’ diets. He is credited with bringing the commodity back to Europe twenty years after Columbus first learned about the beans. 

The story of modernized cocoa powder starts with a man named Coenraad J. van Houten. In 1828, the Dutch chocolate maker patented an inexpensive way to press the fat from cacao beans. The nib, or center of the bean, contains most of the fat. To produce cocoa powder, the beans must be cleaned and then roasted which sterilizes and enhances the flavor of the nib inside. The nib is then extracted from the bean. After this process, the nibs are ground into a cocoa mass and then melted to cocoa liquor.  Van Houten’s machine was a hydraulic press which forced out nearly half of the natural fat, or the cocoa butter, from the liquor. The cakey cocoa solids left behind could be ground or pulverized into what we know as cocoa powder. Van Houten then treated his cocoa powder with a potassium or sodium carbonate solution so it would be more soluble in water, and this is known as Dutch processing. This is considered to be the beginning of the “modern era of chocolate making.” It was in 1849 that a man by the name of Joseph Storrs Fry created the first eating chocolate from cocoa powder by recombining it with cocoa butter and sugar in molds. 

Sales of cocoa powder for the everyday consumer began in the United States in June of 1944. Gourmet Magazine of New York City talked about cocoa powder in its Food Flashes column saying, "[t]he deluxe Dutch process coca, made for many years by Walter Baker and Company for the ice cream trade and the better soda fountains of the country, has gone into retail distribution, appearing for the first time in food specialty shops of the city. R. H. Macy, Broadway and 34th, for one, has the product, priced at 22 cents for a half-pound. This domestic-made cocoa offers all the fine points of the Holland imported of pre-war [WWII] years, but is lower in price." This article was written by Clementine Paddleford.

Recent research has given more insight into the history of cocoa beans. While is has been long believed that they are indigenous to Central America, scientists have found more genetically diverse cocoa beans in South America. Since wider genetic diversity tends to occur where a plant comes from, this is a good reason to believe that the cocoa bean comes from Central America, particularly the Amazon region. 

Black Onyx Cocoa Powder Cultivation

Ivory Coast is the main producer and exporter of Cocoa beans, followed closely by Ghana. All cocoa beans are harvested the same way beginning with the cacao tree and the Chocolate Belt. This belt is a part of the world that ranges from 20 latitudinal degrees north to 20 latitudinal degrees south of the equator. The area is perfect for cocoa growers as the trees require high temperatures of 65-95 degrees Fahrenheit to grow. Humidity and precipitation levels are also ideal for the thirsty trees which need 40-100 inches per year to thrive. Cocoa trees grow best where there is plenty of sunshine. These trees enjoy moderately to highly fertile soils with a good water retention rate. They are vulnerable to strong winds. 

The pods are harvested by chopping them off the trees with machetes. The pods are then sliced with the same machetes and the wet beans are pulled from inside the pods within a week to ten days of harvest. The trees must be checked frequently for ripe pods as they ripen at different rates and the same tree can produce ripe fruit over several weeks. Harvesters are careful to leave the flower cushion of the plant undamaged so the tree can continue to produce fruits in the future. The white flesh surrounding the bean is said to have a taste like lychee fruit and can be eaten, but is mostly left as is during the fermentation process that follows pulling the beans from the pods. Beans undergo a fermentation and drying process and are subsequently bagged for distribution and sale. More often than not companies have to separate the nibs from the shells themselves before they can be used in chocolate making. 

Our Black Onyx Cocoa Powder comes from Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Malaysia, and/or Spain. 

Controversies Surrounding Cocoa Bean Harvesting

Western African countries supply more than 70% of the world’s cacao. Rumors of child labor have made the rest of the world look more closely at the production and harvesting of the cocoa bean in these countries. There are an estimated 21 million people being trafficked for cheap labor yearly, and roughly 5.5 million of those people are children. While many companies that thrive on cocoa production say that child trafficking in the cocoa industry has fallen significantly and they are working on helping cacao farmers reduce those number even further, there are still many skeptics out there. They are chiming in that these billion-dollar companies are turning a blind eye while the child trafficking simply moves underground so people will be less aware of it. 

Poverty is a big reason that child labor is possibly still so rampant. Farmers are desperate for cheap labor because they often make less than two American dollars a day for their efforts on the cocoa farms. This is well below the international poverty line. The children are either paid poorly or not at all, sometimes sold into slavery by their parents who have no other options. Parents may think that this is an opportunity for their child to attend school and earn some money. “Recruiters” assure the parents that their children will be well cared for and then will return home with a great education as well as some savings, but instead most of these children never return home at all and have little to no education to show for it. Approximately 40% of these children are girls, but mostly the trafficked children are boys. 

Nestlé has begun implementing its Cocoa Plan, which has three important parts to it. The first is ensuring the sustainability of the cocoa plant. As much as 40% of the crop is lost annually to disease and insects or animals which destroy the trees. The second part is ensuring that all farmers can run profitable farms, which is affected by the trees themselves. Trees can only produce quality cacao pods between the ages of five and 25, and after that most farmers do not have the means to purchase new trees so their productivity fizzles out. Nestlé has made this part of their plan extremely important and has begun supplying the farmers with tree plantlets which have been bred to produce bigger, higher quality pods which are resilient against pests and disease. These trees also grow more pods than the average cacao tree. The final leg of the plan is to improve social conditions to eliminate the circumstances that help child labor thrive. They hope to help certify farmers in proper growing techniques so the farmers can earn more money and hire proper adult workers. Nestlé has even built schools in impoverished areas to help ensure that children have access to learning and thus upward mobility to break out of the poverty cycle. 

Child labor is considered exploitative when it can pose a threat to the child’s well-being or it interferes with their access to an education. Harmful work includes carrying large loads, wielding machetes, or working long hours with no breaks or food. Some children help on their family farms but tend to do the less intensive work of pulling the seeds from the cacao pods. This is not considered to be exploitive work as their education is not being withheld and they are contributing to their family’s income to their benefit. What is the main concern for people is the quarter of children aged 5-17 who live in cacao growing regions and who never experience life outside of the farm, who are given bananas and cornmeal as food if they are fed at all, and who sleep on wooden planks or on the ground in huts with no access to adequate restrooms or bathing which compromises their health. Many are also exposed to pesticides without adequate protection, another factor compromising their health. A huge majority do not see their families after they have become involved in the cocoa industry. These children are thought to be voiceless victims of an ever-growing industry. Chocolate and cocoa powder do not seem to be losing their popularity anytime soon, which worries advocates who are fighting for the justice of these young workers. 

Types of Cocoa powder

There are three types of cocoa powder. Natural cocoa powder is probably what you think of when you are imagining cocoa powder. It is light brown in color and has the luxury of typically being associated with Hershey’s chocolate and has a pH of something between 5 and 6, depending on the type. This is more acidic than water, which is neutral at a 7 on the pH scale. This cocoa powder tastes mildly acidic. 

The second type is called Alkalized or Dutch Process cocoa powder. This is a darker cocoa powder processed with an alkalizing agent such as potassium to neutralize acidity and enhance the color. When the powder has been alkalized, it is more easily soluble in water. It has a smoother flavor than natural cocoa powder.

Finally, the third type of cocoa powder is a super alkalized or black onyx cocoa powder. This is the darkest of the powders and it is treated the longest with the alkalized solution. It has the smoothest flavor of all of the cocoa powders.

Cooking with Black Onyx Cocoa Powder

Black Onyx cocoa powder is the source of the extremely dark color of oreo cookies. You can make your own oreo-like cookies at home with this cocoa powder. Many recipes can be found with the help of google, but I like this one called “Homemade Oreos.” This cocoa powder contains no acid, so it will not react to baking soda in traditional baking scenarios leaving your recipes flat, quite literally. If your recipe specifically calls for baking soda as the leavener, you will typically need to use natural cocoa powder. In the case of this homemade oreo recipe, you will not need to replace the cocoa powder with the natural cocoa powder as there is no need for the cookies to rise. 

For a wonderfully dark chocolate drink, take a quarter cup of black onyx cocoa powder, a half cup of granulated sugar, one third of a cup of hot water, an eighth of a teaspoon of salt, and four cups of milk and warm them in a sauce pan over medium heat. Stir frequently until the sugar, salt, and cocoa dissolve and the mixture bubbles. Serve hot. If so desired, add a cinnamon stick for decoration and a little added flavor. 

Cocoa powder in general is great for foods on the sweeter spectrum so consider sprinkling some over a bowl of fruit. Frozen bananas can be chopped and then dusted with this to create a healthy snack. Take it a step further and blend the bananas with the cocoa powder for a nice, cold smoothie to be drunk or eaten with a spoon. 

Cocoa powder is rich in antioxidants as well as being chock full of (pun intended) nutrients like iron, magnesium, and copper- all of which are necessary for good heart health. Scientists have given tangible evidence to the health benefits of dark chocolate, which is essentially chocolate with higher amounts of cocoa powder in it. 

For that avid meat eater in your life, you could rub some of this on a rack of ribs to enhance the meat’s flavor. For a less direct approach, combine it with your favorite barbeque sauce and then apply to the ribs. Add a pinch to a meat based chili for an interesting new dimension to a classic dinner favorite. 

One of our favorite recipes using cocoa powder is Cacao and Peanut Butter smoothies. The organic cacao powder used in this recipe can be easily replaced with the Black Onyx cocoa powder. We also like using this cocoa powder to make Vegan Black Bean Brownies.

Cocoa powder tastes good with dairy based foods, fruits, with peanut butter, on pork, and with breads. It can stay fresh for up to two years in a sealed container kept at room temperature. 

What Does it Taste Like?

Black Onyx cocoa powder is more alkalized than any of the other cocoa powders, so it has the most mild flavor of them all. Some bakers argue that foods made with this grade of cocoa powder have the most “chocolatey” and most palatably pleasing flavor of all the flavors. Other bakers argue that this powder has little to no taste at all, but we tend to disagree with them. 

Substitutions and Conversions

This cocoa powder can be substituted for either of the other two cocoa powders with consideration of the leavening agent on a 1:1 scale.

When using unsweetened baking chocolate to replace cocoa powder, you must consider that every ounce of this chocolate is 3 tablespoons powder and 1 tablespoon of fat. Find somewhere else in the recipe that you can remove a tablespoon worth of fat. Butter would be a likely candidate in the case of baking.

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