Organic, Fairtrade cacao powder from Iswari, made from Sierra Leone cacao. Cacao beans are fermented, dried, ground and pressed to remove most of the cocoa butter; what is left is milled to this deep, fine, unsweetened powder.
What it tastes like
Intense and properly bitter, with the fruit and acidity that natural cacao keeps and Dutched cocoa loses. It is not sweetened and it is not mellow — it wants sugar, dates, banana or milk alongside it.
Cacao powder or cocoa powder?
Chemically the same starting material, differently treated. Dutch-processed cocoa is alkalised, which darkens the colour, softens the acidity and destroys a large share of the flavanols. Natural cacao powder like this one is not alkalised, keeps more of its acidity and polyphenols, and behaves differently in baking — it reacts with bicarbonate of soda, where Dutched cocoa needs baking powder. If a recipe is fussy about rise, this matters.
Claims you will not find here
Cacao powder is routinely sold on antioxidant properties that protect cells from oxidative stress and prevent premature ageing, and on claims that cacao supports mood, relaxation and heart health. None of those claims is authorised in the EU, so none appears here. There is exactly one authorised cocoa claim — it concerns cocoa flavanols and blood vessel elasticity, requires a specific measured flavanol dose per serving, and we have no such figure for this product, so we are not going to imply it.
What is true and worth saying: cacao is genuinely rich in polyphenols, magnesium, iron and copper, and it is one of the more interesting things you can put in a kitchen. That is enough.
Practical notes
Cacao contains theobromine, which is toxic to dogs — keep the bag closed and out of reach. It is high in oxalate, which matters if you form kidney stones, and cacao naturally accumulates cadmium, which is why the EU sets maximum levels for cocoa products. None of that argues against enjoying it; all of it argues against enormous daily quantities.
Iswari
Smart Organic
Iswari
Iswari
