Nuts for Cacao

Susan Jane White Eats shoots & leaves

Cacao sounds like a verb. Something you gleefully do to someone when they are igniting your temper. So I understand if the sound of cacao butter doesn’t exactly seduce your senses. But I’m here to tell you it should. Cacao butter will take your porridge to a whole new level — that’s why we call this recipe The Elevator.

Curiously, cacao butter is creamy and pale. If you didn’t know what it looked like, and you closed your eyes and smelled it, you’d never guess it wasn’t chocolate. You see, cacao butter is responsible for All Things Chocolatey. That’s right. This ingredient owns you.

It would be more practical to call this PMT porridge, but my editor’s eyes would surely burn. Chocolate has a calling like an ultrasonic dog whistle, whose pitch is audible only to females. Know the one? Ignoring these soundwave emissions is, in my experience, downright dangerous. The longer the ear-splitting pitch, the sharper the fangs. Consider this recipe as a form of self-medication, so.

Like all butters, cacao fat is unreasonably delicious and leaves your palate purring for more. But a little goes a long way. We now know that moderate amounts of good fats form an integral part of our health — avocados, unsalted nuts, olive oil, egg yolks. Cheap, bastardised fats — found in convenience products and confectionery — will merely brutalise your waistline and your arteries.

Find the unadulterated raw form of cacao butter in health shops and SuperValu stores nationwide. Cacao is not housed in the refrigerated area — look instead for the superfood shelf, made for savvy shoppers like you in mind.