15 Ways To Use Cacao

Cacao is delicious and is packed with a lot of health benefits. But of course, if you want to take them only because they are delicious, there’s no harm in taking a few spoons of your cacao paste or a few cacao nibs daily.

However, just popping them in your mouth could get boring. Here are 15 ways to use cacao.

1. Make A Healthy Beverage

This is the simplest way to use the cacao paste (aside from placing the paste in your mouth directly). You can make hot chocolate with cacao paste or cacao powder, and it’s healthier than regular hot chocolate. 

You can take this in the morning as an alternative to coffee, but it doesn’t contain as much alertness-boost as your regular coffee. Cacao beverage might be best when you want to relax or whatever you love to take your cup of hot chocolate for.

Some cacao paste, hot water, and, if you want, a little sweetener such as sugar or substitute or almond milk are all you need.

2. Enjoy A Delicious Smoothie

Love that dash of chocolate in your smoothie? Or do you love having the full chocolate smoothie experience? Why not replace your chocolate with cacao? Whether you have cacao powder or cacao paste in hand, you can prepare a delicious smoothie with fruits such as bananas. That’s a way to enjoy home-made ice-cream without the bad effects of manufactured sugar.

3. Bake A Chocolate (Cacao) Cake

You can use cacao paste in baking. Want to make a healthy (or not) chocolate cake? Cacao can be used, and you will still get plenty of flavor with additional health benefits. This can be a great dessert or used to celebrate occasions.

You can also use cacao nibs as a replacement for chocolate chips in your baking.

4. Enrich Your Breakfast Cereal

Cacao has so many benefits. It will be great for your body if you add cacao paste to your bowl of cereal and some fruits. Alternatively, you can use cacao nibs as a replacement for chocolate nibs or chips.

5. Add A Depth Of Flavor To Your Chilli

When many think of cacao, they think of chocolate replacements only like a snack or a drink, but cacao does way more than that. In some cultures, it is used in meals. So, you can add your cacao paste to any chili recipe. Just add a dash of the paste while it’s simmering. 

6. Prepare Cacao Oatmeal

Do you like chocolate oatmeal? You would love cacao oatmeal. Even if you haven’t tried chocolate oatmeal previously, cacao oatmeal is bound to win most people over. Add some cacao paste to your oats and milk, and you’re good to go. For additional sweetening, you can add coconut sugar or your favorite sweetener.

7. Enjoy A Healthy Cacao-Flavored Yoghurt

If you love to have additional flavors in your yogurt, you should try cacao. You can add the paste or nibs depending on the taste you’re going for. You only need a tiny amount to get the flavor to come through.

8. Season Your Meat

Cacao is delicious on steak and roasts. Some people blend that with coffee to rub over their steak or roast. That’s entirely up to you. You can try a bit of finely ground coffee, salt, cinnamon, and cacao paste while seasoning your meat.

9. Use As An Earthy Spice In Your Stew

In some parts of central and south America, cacao is used as a spice in stew with sweet potatoes, tomatoes, lime, and cinnamon. It adds a fantastic flavor to the meal.

10. Enhance Granola

So much of these recipes have been around using cacao paste. What about cacao nibs? Adding cacao nibs to your granola is one of the many ways to use cacao for better. It adds a bit more crunchiness to your granola. Don’t forget that it’s healthy too.

11. Healthy Fun Snack

You can make quick and easy snacks with cacao, such as bliss balls. With some dates and nuts, you can create a fun snack for kids or yourself. It works great as a pre-workout snack or something to nibble on at any time.

12. Improve Your Hot Beverages

The number one way to use cacao in this article was to make a hot beverage. However, you can do more than that with beverages, such as using it to enhance your other drinks. For example, a little addition of cacao paste to coffee can make for a mocha-like drink.

13. Cacao Drizzle

Do you love chocolate drizzle to top off your smoothies, pancakes, or fruits? Cacao is even better. With cacao paste, nut butter, and any liquid sweetener of your choice, you can create a nice drizzle.

14. Body Care Staple

Cacao does more than enhance or create food or snack that goes into your mouth. It can also be used as a skin and hair care product. Some people use it as a face mask by mixing cacao paste with honey. It stimulates blood circulation in the skin, gives a rosy glow, and smoothen fine lines.

You can also add it to your body scrub because of those exact benefits. Also, cacao is rich in antioxidants, which helps restore cell functioning, repair skin, and fight free radical damage.

15. Add To Hair Products

Adding cacao to your hair routine aids in the growth of healthy and strong hair. It also aids in length retention. The reason for all that is that cacao contains sulfur and protein, which is excellent for hair, not only as food taken into the body but also lathered on the hair. You can add it to your deep conditioner or use it as a hair mask.