RECIPE - Cupuaçu "Hot Chocolate" (Leite Queimado com Cupuaçu)

Creative Brazilian chefs, paying attention to the botanical relationship between cacau (the source of chocolate) and cupuaçu, an Amazonian fruit that is a close relative of cacau, are beginning to explore the possibilities of substituting cupuaçu for chocolate in recipes - seeing when and where this substitution might result in an interesting "it's-chocolate-but-it's-not" moment.

In a recent series of articles in the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper on the culinary uses of cupuaçu seeds, Brazilian food writer and blogger Neide Rigo posted some reinterpretations of standard chocolate recipes, substituting cupuaçu. Things like a mole-style sauce for chicken, a mousse, and a chip-laden cookie, all of which replace chocolate with cupuaçu.

She also recreates hot chocolate with cupuaçu seeds, and the result is a creamy, sweet drink that's perfect on a damp or chilly day. (Incidentally, contrary to what many people believe, there are damp and chilly days in Brazil - either in the far south, or in high-altitude locations elsewhere in the country.)
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RECIPE - Cupuaçu "Hot Chocolate" (Leite Queimado com Cupuaçu)
makes one drink

10 cupuaçu seeds
1 cup whole milk
2 Tbsp sugar
1 clove
small piece of cinnamon stick
small piece of lime zest - green part only
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In a blender combine the cupuaçu seeds and the milk, and process completely. In a saucepan, caramelize the sugar (click here to read about caramelizing sugar). Add the mixture from the blender, the clove, the cinnamon and the lime zest to the caramelized sugar, stirring constantly until the sugar has dissolved. Bring rapidly to the boil, then remove from the heat, cover and let stand for 10 minutes for the flavors to blend.

Pour the liquid through a sieve into another small saucepan, and heat to just below the boiling point. Serve immediately.

Developing the Cupuaçu's Full Potential

cupuaçu fruit

Although it's as yet virtually unknown outside Brazil, chocolate's close relative, the cupuaçu, has always been loved in Brazil. People there line up in ice cream parlors to get a double scoop of cupuaçu ice cream. And when Brazilians want a rich, creamy drink they often go for a glass of freshly-prepared cupuaçu juice. Mousses, puddings and cream fillings of all sorts are often flavored with the richly aromatic fruit.

What is interesting about the two closely related foods, chocolate and cupuaçu, is that up til now, each of the two fruits has been exploited entirely differently, their biological relationship notwithstanding. Chocolate is derived from the fermented and dried seeds of the cacau fruit, but when it comes to cupuaçu it's the succulent pulp which is eaten. A look inside these two botanical cousins gives an indication why this might be so - there is little pulp and a large number of seeds inside the cacau fruit but inside the cupuaçu the portions are reversed, with plenty of creamy pulp and a smaller number of seeds.

Recently, however, there have been some very interesting developments in the exploitation of cupuaçu. Food scientists, creative chefs and food-security activists in Brazil are taking a second look at the cupuaçu. They're moving beyond the pulp and concentrating on the seeds. The thought is that since the world has long been addicted to chocolate in all its variety, it might be worthwhile seeing what the gastronomic potential is of the seeds of the cupuaçu. Perhaps it could come to stand alongside chocolate as one of the most commercially valuable members of the Theobroma genus. Theobroma does mean "food of the gods" in Greek, and maybe it's time to add cupuaçu to the pantheon as well.

fermented cupuaçu seeds

Fresh from the pod, neither the seeds of cupuaçu nor cacau are edible - it's only after fermentation and drying that the seeds can be used in the kitchen. The chemical changes involved in this process are a gastronomic transformation that is the culinary equivalent of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Horticulturists and nutritionists are now looking at cupuaçu with a new eye. The potential for gastronomic use of the seed far exceeds the market for pulp. Chefs in Brazil are already creating recipes that exploit the best characteristics of the seeds, NGOs are helping farmers in the rain forest develop sustainable cupuaçu agriculture, and media campaigns are already underway to educate the public about cupuaçu seeds.

On Wednesday, we'll feature recipes from the Brazilian press which focus on this unique fruit and it's entirely new use.

On the Road - Maranhão (Pt. 9) - Fresh Cupuaçu Juice Taste Test

Back in July, Flavors of Brazil discussed a fruit from the northern reaches of the Brazil called cupuaçu. You can read those posts by clicking here and here and here. Although I was familiar with this cousin-of-chocolate through a variety of processed foods made from cupuaçu, like ice cream and frozen fruit pulp, I had never had the opportunity to taste the fresh fruit itself. Until the blog's recent trip to São Luis, Maranhão, that is.

Brazilian cities and towns are full of fresh fruit-juice bars serving freshly blended fruit juice along with a variety of sandwiches and snacks. The selection of available fruits is always large, and sometimes overwhelmingly enormous. Some of the fruits are universally available throughout the country and all year round - for example, mango or papaya or pineapple. Others are restricted by availability either by season or region. Many of the Amazonian fruits are available in southern Brazil, if available at all, only in the form of frozen fruit pulp blended with water.

So it was a pleasure to find that almost all the fruit-juice bars in São Luis listed many Amazonian fruits on their juice menus, and a quick question to the bar-boys confirmed that fresh fruit was used rather than frozen pulp. During a mid-afternoon walk along the main pedestrian street in downtown São Luis, in the 90F (32C) sun, it seemed like a prudent and pleasant thing to sample a glass of fruit juice. Having eaten cupuaçu ice cream in Fortaleza, and having really liked it, I decided to have a glass to compare the flavor of frozen juice and the fresh-made variety. The cost for a 300 ml glass was R$2.50, about USD $1.40.

When the bar-boy poured the juice from the blender into a glass, the thick, creamy texture of the juice was evident. It looked and poured like a milk-shake. The color was almost white, just tinged with light green. The aroma was sweet, and there was a very faint hint of acetone (nail-polish remover). Drunk through a straw, the drink first offered up a rich and almost buttery mouth-feel. It was immediately clear that this juice had a significant amount of vegetable fat. The initial taste was clearly tutti-frutti, the taste we associate with bubble gum, but that was followed with the taste of white chocolate. Given the close botanical relationship between cupuaçu and cacau that made perfect sense.

The drink was delicious and refreshing. I enjoyed it immensely. However, because of the high fat content of cupuaçu, you really couldn't call the juice thirst-quenching. The sensation was similar to that of eating ice cream - it cools you off but it doesn't deal with your thirst. I asked for, and received, a glass of ice water which topped of my taste-test perfectly.

It's unfortunate that fresh cupuaçu is extremely perishable and thus one needs to travel to northen Brazil to sample it. Or, rather, considering its high caloric value, it's probably fortunate for me that it's not available here in Fortaleza. I'd definitely be going back for more if it were!

RECIPE - Cupuaçu and Lemongrass Milkshake (Leite Batida de Cupuaçu e Capim-Santo)

Since the pulp of the cupuaçu fruit is full of nutrients, vitamins and antioxidants I've been trying to find some recipes that use frozen cupuaçu pulp to create a healthy dish or drink. Many of the traditional Brazilian recipes for this exotic and spectacularly delicious fruit call for large amounts of sugar, cream, sweetened condensed milk and/or eggs to create the creams and custards which are most closely associated with cupuaçu.

I recently came across this recipe for a layered smoothie/milkshake that combines the rich, creamy taste of cupuaçu with the citric snap of lemongrass (capim-santo in Portuguese). Served icy-cold directly from the freezer, it's a waker-upper that gets top marks for flavor and for healthiness. With the increasing availability of frozen cupuaçu pulp in North America and Europe and with fresh lemongrass becoming more and more available everywhere, here's an exotic drink that you can enjoy at home in your morning robe.
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RECIPE - Cupuaçu and Lemongrass Milkshake (Leite Batida de Cupuaçu e Capim-Santo)
Makes 2 drinks

2 Tbsp. finely chopped lemongrass (center leaves only)
2 cups nonfat milk
2 Tbsp. granulated sugar (can substitute honey)
1 cup frozen cupuaçu pulp (defrosted)
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Place lemongrass, milk and sugar in bowl of blender or food processor. Blend or process for one minute.

Pour mixture through fine sieve into glass jar. Cover and place in freezer for 30 minutes.

Pour half of the cupuaçu pulp into each of two large tumblers. Then top with the lemongrass mixture from the freezer. Decorate with sprigs of lemongrass if desired, then serve immediately.


Recipe translated and adapted from Espaco Viva Mais.

RECIPE - Cupuaçu Flan (Pudim de Cupuaçu)

The creamy, rich flesh of the cupuaçu (click here to read more) makes it particularly suited to milk-based sweets and dessert. Things like custards, creams, mousses and flans. In fact, when dealing with this fruit from the rainforest of the Amazon, if you remember its close botanical relationship with chocolate, you can easily imagine what kinds of desserts welcome the complex flavor of cupuaçu. If it's good made with chocolate, it's likely to be good made with cupuaçu.

Here's a recipe for a flan flavored with cupuaçu. Flans are as common and as prized in Brazil as they are anywhere else in Latin America. A culinary gift from the Iberian peninsula, the flan traveled with European colonizers to Mexico, to Peru, to Chile and Argentina, and to Brazil. This one is easy to make and delicious. The only difficult part might be finding cupuaçu pulp, but do check the freezer of your local health food store. With the increasing popularity of cupuaçu in the Northern Hemisphere if it's not there now, it's likely to be so soon.
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RECIPE - Cupuaçu Flan (Pudim de Cupuaçu)
Serves 8

1 cup granulated sugar
1 can sweetened condensed milk

3/4 cup (200 ml) water
4 whole free-range eggs
1 Tbsp. cornstarch

1 cup frozen cupuaçu pulp
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Preheat the oven to 350F (175C).

Caramelize the sugar, then line a glass or ceramic cooking dish with the sugar. (For a photo tutorial on how to safely caramelize sugar, click here.)

Add the remaining ingredients to a blender, then blend until smooth and creamy. Pour the liquid into the caramelized baking dish, then put the dish into a large glass casserole or lasagne dish. Pour in boiling water until water reaches the top of blender liquid. Carefully place on middle rack in pre-heated oven. Cook for approximately 45 minutes, or until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Remove from heat. Let cool completely.

To serve, briefly set the baking dish is hot water to melt the caramel, then reverse the dish onto a serving platter. Serve immediately.

INGREDIENTS: Cupuaçu - Chocolate's upstart cousin

Anyone who has paid much attention to the problems of deforestation and loss of biodiversity in Brazil's Amazon rainforest probably knows that the area has the highest rate of biodiversity in the world. One in ten of the total number of animal and plant species on Earth inhabit the Amazon rainforest. Some experts have estimated that in that region, one square kilometer of land might host 75,000 types of trees, and 150,000 species of higher plants. (Those numbers are not typos!) The total number of species that have been catalogued to date is approximately 438,000, and there are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands more still to be discovered.

Recently, several Amazonian plant species which have always been important food and/or medicinal sources in Brazil have started to gain fame outside of Brazil, principally in North America, Europe and Japan. They are often marketed as "superfood" and outrageous claims are made as to their healthful properties. This is not to say that these foods don't have such properties, it's just that they are sometimes overmarketed as a panacaea for every kind of ill. In the past Flavors of Brazil has featured discussions of the açaí berry and of guaraná, both of which come from the Amazon. (Click their names in bold print to read more about these fruits.)

Recently, I've noticed that both here in Brazil, and in publications in North America the word cupuaçu (pronounced coop-oo-ah-SOO) is starting to pop up more and more, and some are claiming it to be the next Amazonian superfood. I've eaten cupuaçu ice cream, had cupuaçu mousse, both of which have been commonly available in Brazil for a long time, but now I'm seeing cosmetics and soaps made with it, extracts and creams available in health food stores, and frozen pulp for making cupuaçu juice at home. I began to wonder if it lived up to its hype.

A very little research led me to the first surprising fact about this fruit of the rainforest - it's a member of the genus Theobroma, meaning "food of the gods", whose most famous member is cacau, the tree that gives us chocolate. Theobroma cacau is the cacau tree, and Theobroma grandiflorum is the cupuaçuzeiro, the cupuaçu tree. This tree grows wild in the rainforest, and reaches heights of up to 70 feet. The cupuaçu fruit itself is large, up to a foot long (30 cm.) with a hard brown shell enclosing several seed pods, each of which contains the custardy, creamy fruit called cupuaçu.

Although describing what something tastes like is extremely difficult - most things taste like themselves - the highly aromatic and flavored cupuaçu fruit is often described as tasting like a mixture of chocolate, pineapple and/or bubblegum. I would agree with that flavor profile, and know that I know the botanical family tree of the cupuaçu I understand where that "hint of chocolate" comes from. I personally find the bubblegum flavor comes through stronger than the pineapple, but some of my friends find that the pineapple taste and aroma is predominant.

In addition to sharing similar flavors, cousins cacau and cupuaçu share another characteristic. Both fruits provide a rich hydrating fat, called a "butter." Cocoa fat (or cocoa butter) is used both in cooking and as a lotion for its hydrating properties. The fat of the cupuaçu fruit is equally suited to both roles.

In the next few posts, Flavors of Brazil will feature some traditional and typical recipes for dishes made with cupuaçu. Like açaí and guaraná, if cupuaçu isn't available yet in your nearby health food store it will be soon. Try it - you'll find the flavor exotic and appealing, the creamy texture divine, and if the ads and blurbs can be believed, you'll be ingesting one of the healthiest foods on the planet. Not a bad deal, I'd say.