Madre Chocolate's Triple Cacao: Chewy, Chocolaty and Completely Unique

Finally, finally, FINALLY I have tasted Hawaiian-based Madre Chocolate's award-winning Triple Cacao bar. On day three of 'firsts', I dove into this tiny chocolate bar packed with all that the cacao tree has to offer: dark chocolate made from organic and 'ethically-sourced' cacao beans, cacao nibs (broken pieces of the bean before they are ground into chocolate), and cacao fruit pulp, a rare ingredient in chocolate.

Cacao fruit pulp is the white pulp that surrounds cocoa beans inside the pod, which is normally an underused part of the cacao fruit for consumption, although it is used to help in the fermentation process by simply leaving it on the beans to develop a good cocoa flavour.

Madre has found a great way to use the pulp and to introduce its existence to chocolate lovers. I paid a lot for the 43 gram Triple Cacao bar ($13.49 CAD), but it was worth the price. There is a nice upfront roast flavour. The bits of cacao fruit pulp have been dried so they are soft and chewy. I do not normally like dried fruit in chocolate, but this is not overly sweet, and it has a very soft and nice fruity flavour.

Because of the 'chewiness' of the cacao pulp, one hour after tasting this chocolate the delicious tang of the pulp still rests in the back of my teeth (I suppose I should brush, but why brush away this goodness?). The pulp stood out, so it seems fitting that it lasted the longest.

Madre Chocolate's Triple Cacao chocolate bar has won numerous international awards, including a Gold at the 2012 U.S. edition of the International Chocolate Awards and a Silver at the World-wide awards of the same year, as well as a Gold Seal at the Good Food Awards.

Madre Chocolate is made from bean-to-bar in Kailua, Oahu in Hawaii.  They make many flavours of bean-to-bar chocolate, including a bar made from Hawaiian-grown Criollo. In Canada, in addition to La Tablette de Miss Chocolate, you can find Madre in Edmonton. In the U.S. you can find Madre Chocolate in many, many locations.

My first taste of Madre's other chocolate bars was in 2012. You can read the review here.

Here are the ingredients and key package details from the chocolate that I wrote about today:

Triple Cacao Dark Chocolate, 70% cacao, 1.5 oz (43 g)
Madre Chocolate (Honolulu, Hawai'i)
www.madrechocolate.com
Ingredients: organic cacao beans, organic sugar, organic cocoa butter, cacao pulp, cacao nibs, Mexican whole vanilla. Made in a facility that also processes nuts & milk.