Cacao vs. cocoa

[Soka]

Is cocoa and cacao the same thing?

[raweater]

Yes, cacao is normally used in french and cocoa in english but they are the same.

[Soka]

Well I ask because I went back to the store (I was craving something sweet) and wanted to get cocoa and bananas and try and make some sort of smoothie out of it. All of the cans of cocoa/cacao were really expensive. Should I find a raw version? Is Hershey's cocoa ok to use?

[raweater]

What form of cacao were you looking for? You can get cacao beans, nibs, powder and butter/oil.

All of them except beans and nibs are normally not raw but still very healthy. If you can find them raw and don't mind paying the extra price then that's even healthier. Otherwise you can do like me and get regular cacao powder that's not raw to save some cash.

In what form is the Hershey cacao you are asking about? Is it powder or a chocolate bar or some other form? If it's a chocolate bar it will have sugar and almost certainly dairy and artificial flavors added and is not raw at all.

[Soka]

It was powdered form. There is a Good Foods store up the street from me, but they are closed on Sundays so I went back up to the Fresh market, but the only cocoa powder they have is either really expensive stuff (that's not even raw) or Hershey's. I looked at the ingredients on the Hershey's and it just said cocoa.

[raweater]

In that case the Hershey's is probably fine if you don't mind it not being officially raw and sounds similar to what I get.

[Soka]

I am not worrying too much about the raw part. One day I'll switch to 100% raw, but for now, I'm mostly trying to be vegan with the majority of my diet being raw. Thanks for the replies!

I wanted to make a banana chocolate smoothie of some kind. Do I need to add anything to the smoothie other than banana and cocoa? I was thinking of using soymilk, but I can't find raw milk alternatives anywhere. I have access to all sorts of milk alternatives but none of them are raw. :(

[raweater]

Soy is pretty unhealthy, www.mercola.com has lots of info on the dangers of soy/tofu.

For a raw milk simply put water and a bit of walnuts, macadamia nuts or cashews in the blender with the other ingredients, nuts and water turn into raw vegan milk when blended. The nuts I mentioned do not need to be strained like almonds and certain other nuts require.

Most mornings I make this shake for breakfast and lunch at school (half for breakfast half for lunch) which is very similar to what you're trying to make (this is for half what I normally make, expect this to be a full meal, you likely won't be hungry after that as it's close to 1000 calories):

1.5 cups of water including about 6-8 ice cubes
1/2 cup of walnuts, cashews or macadamia nuts
2 bananas
4 T cacao powder
2 T coconut oil, optional
Honey/agave and/or stevia to taste, I normally put about half the amount of honey I'd put for the sweetness I want and complete the sweetness level with stevia powder to reduce the amount of sugar in it.
Pinch of salt

Blend on low speed, then high speed (or run the XL Smoothie cycle on a Blendtec).

[Soka]

Well I love almond milk and I was wanting to make some raw almond milk, but raw almonds are $8/lb. If I wanted to have 1/2 gallon of raw almond milk, how many lbs of raw almonds do I need?

[raweater]

The cost of raw almonds is one reason why I normally use walnuts, macadamia nuts or cashews, in the recipe I posted you can't tell the difference anyway.

Almond milk needs to be strained after being blended which means it is much more complex and time consuming to make.

Also don't forget that raw milk only keeps for 2-3 days in the fridge so don't make more than you're going to consume in that time, or as I recommended above make it directly in your recipes by adding water and nuts to the blender.

As for the quantity it depends on how rich you want the milk, normally I think 1 part of nuts for 4 parts water is good.