Durian chocolate: A taste of Davao
IN a city like Davao where cacao and durian grow in abundance, what products can you possibly make? The answer: durian chocolate.
Chocolatier Elaine Lim did just that by pulling off her own spin of delectable chocolates. Giving it a more local flavor, she innovated in making durian chocolate to make it more palatable for the visitors’ discriminating palate.
“I was based outside of Davao for more than 10 years. Those up in Manila, for example, do not eat durian candies,” she said.
She added durian jam as filling to her dark chocolates, giving durian haters the ease of tasting the fruit without actually eating its meat in a form of a luxurious dessert. Some of those who have tried want for more.
“We have customers who bring our products abroad in small quantities,” she said.
Lim took up a short course in chocolate-making from a chocolatier in Sydney, Australia during her vacation there last year.
Having been exposed to various culinaries as a writer for magazines in Manila and Singapore has given her a profound background about food.
But growing up in a family much involved in candy-making and baker- ies is where her penchant for food-making comes from.
Her father who is an engineer by profession devised a machinery tailored-fit for her needs in making the chocolates. Both of them have worked together, and thus Cacao de Davao came into being.
There’s an advocacy that lies behind the inception of her company, this being a medium to promote Davao’s cacao beans.
Making use of the locally grown cacao beans, she wanted to prove that Filipinos, too, can equally produce high quality chocolates, if not better than what chocolatiers from the world can do.
Cacao de Davao’s products come in 70 percent dark chocolate and 45 per- cent chocolate. It also has cacao nibs, and tablea for a good cup of hot chocolate.
Lim takes pride in the “single-origin” beans sourced from Calinan.
In making premium chocolate bars, she does with a simple philosophy – that is, to never add anything to it that makes it taste fancy.
“We only use the basic beans and coco sugar. We don’t add anything in it,” she said.
Davao Region is the biggest producer of cocoa beans in the Philippines, supplying around 10,000 metric tons a year.
The Cacao Industry Development of Mindanao Inc., (Cidami) said the domestic demand for cacao beans is around 50,000 MT a year.
Cidami executive director Val Turtur said he is encouraging farmers to plant cacao seedlings, as there is already a huge demand from the local market.
The demand for cacao will also grow by 2020 from 4 million MT of dried fermented cacao beans to 5 million MT, the reason why Cidami encourages Davao farmers to embark on cacao plantations, or even just intercropping other crops with cacao trees.
The campaign of the Cidami in encouraging farmers to intercrop some coconut plantations with cacao is intended to meet the 100,000 metric tons, a challenge posed by one of the world’s largest producer of candies, Mars Chocolate, by 2020.
“That 100,000 de- mand is only coming from one company, Mars, and there’s still more demand in the market,” Turtur said during the Coffee Summit at the 1st Cacao and Chocolate Summit at the Seda Abreeza Hotel on Thursday last week.