Macambo - Jaguar White Cacao Beans- 1KG

1 KG Bag of Theobroma Bicoloris Beans

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WHAT IS JAGUAR CACAO?

In the Ecuadorian Amazon, generations of indigenous farmers have harvested and cultivated macambo, also known as Jaguar Cacao Beans, from tall rainforest trees.
It is a hidden gem, a close but distinctive relative of cacao, with a delicate white bean. Its scientific name, Theobroma bicolor, points to this close relationship with cacao, though it has important differences.

Macambo is currently grown near the earliest archaeological site with evidence of cacao consumption dating back 5,000 years. With its tasty pulp and large, edible seeds, macambo was very likely discovered and domesticated at around the same time as cacao by ancient Indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon basin.

Jaguar Cacao is known as macambo, but also as patasmuyo, kila, wakam, bacao. paxate, and cacao blanco.

We work together with Canopy Bridge, an Ecuadorian company dedicated to supporting communities who conserve biodiversity by developing innovative traditional products for market.

USES

Our macambo beans are roasted at low temperatures, allowing chocolate makers and chefs latitude to develop the flavor and aroma profile to their specifications through additional roasting. We can provide custom roasting on request.

Chocolate making
When worked like cacao beans for true chocolate, the nutty macambo beans alone can create a delicate “white” bar. Or, processed together with cacao, can lead to a smooth, milky bar – without any dairy.

Whole beans can also be covered in chocolate, playing with the contrast of these two related beans from the cocoa family. Macambo nibs, with their nuttiness, slight fruitiness and crunchy texture can also be used as an inclusion in chocolate bars. Macambo beans have about half the fat of cocoa beans, which may require adding cocoa butter (or another fat or oil) for conching and melanging

As nuts in other culinary uses
Though not in the true botanical sense a nut (but rather, a seed), macambo beans are spectacular in any recipe calling for nuts for flavor and texture, including tarts and other desserts, nut butters and pralines, sauces, soups and garnishes for both sweet and savory dishes.

IMPACT: TREES THAT SUSTAIN

In Ecuador, our macambo is grown by indigenous farmers from the Kichwa and Shuar nations who have conserved productive trees for decades.
Ninety percent of macambo farmers are women, and macambo is providing them with their own incomes which they typically reinvest in family needs like health and education for their children. For the uninitiated, these indigenous farms, known as chakras in the local Kichwa language, are indistinguishable from rainforest. Farms are dense and diverse, with dozens of plant species from tall canopy trees filtering the light to understory bushes, climbing vines and ground-hugging herbs. Each tree and plant traditionally has its use and place in maintaining the cycle of nutrients and web of life in the fragile rainforest environment, yielding food, medicine, building materials, dyes and countless other uses.
Macambo trees are found scattered across these forest farms, typically planted years ago by the grandmothers and mothers of the farmers who harvest the macambo pods today. Until recently, macambo harvest and consumption was falling into decline, part of a broader pattern of local communities abandoning healthytraditional foods for modern diets. Canopy Bridge provides nutrition and cooking workshops to promote a resurgence in the use of macambo and other healthy traditional foods.

By selling a portion of their macambo harvest, which was previously left to spoil on the forest floor, women farmers are seeing new value from conserving this and other traditional crops. They have boosted their incomes and have begun to value anew macambo as a healthy and delicious local food, consumed in stews, roasted and fried. Slowly and carefully, they are recovering abandoned trees and incorporating a new generation of macambo into the mix of their chakras, with support from nurseries and tree-planting programs together with Canopy Bridge.