Any chocolate lover can probably tell you that cacao is the most important ingredient in any chocolate confection. But not ...

but consuming the fleshy fruit surrounding raw cacao seeds isn't a common practice. Cacao fruits are grown on the Theobroma cacao tree. This long and curved fruit is primarily cultivated for its ...

The fruit of the cocoa tree is a pod full of sweet pulp enfolding a cluster of about 20 to 40 cocoa seeds. Cocoa takes about two and a half years to mature and gives two harvests in a year.

The cacao trees mature at five years and begin to flower on the trunk. The flowers are pollinated by midges, a small fly.