Take a spoonful of sweet white blancmange, savor the firm espresso jelly, and enjoy a wave of chocolate Bavarian cream spreading across your palate! Within the fluffy texture on your tongue comes a surprisingly rich bitterness of chocolate. But the sweet creamy flavor gently returns, leaving you with a taste that melts in your mouth as you take your last bite. Don’t take this lightly. This is no ordinary dessert.

    Chocolate from Brazil began arriving to MIHO MUSEUM’s pastry kitchen recently. This chocolate is produced in the Tome-Acu region, which is known for its agroforestry farming practices. Among some experts, Tome-Acu chocolate is of the highest quality. Here unfolds a drama…

   Tome-Acu is home to many Japanese immigrants and an area that flourished in the 1920s with pepper cultivation. However, several decades later, the pepper crops were destroyed by disease and the farmers fell into extremely difficult times. Then, one farmer looked at the indigenous people of the Amazon and wondered how it was that they could live so peacefully. A closer look revealed they established a lifestyle in which they cultivated various crops around their homes so that “even if one crop goes bad as long as the others are doing well, there is no problem.” Eventually, he grew various plants—bananas, cacao, pepper, fruits, and mahogany for timber, and switched to a farming method in which he received the bounty of the harvest while reviving the forest. As the crops grew abundant, the birds and insects returned to the regenerated forest.

    Cacao cultivation using the agricultural chemical-free and chemical fertilizer-free Shumei Natural Agriculture farming method has started to be used in the Tome-Acu region. Our restaurant uses Tome-Acu chocolate and peppers and perhaps in time we may even get fruits from there too!

   Now, let’s get back to the chocolate babaloa. The balance of the three layers is the deciding factor of this delicious dessert. Because products from the same area are said to be compatible, the espresso jelly in the second layer is made from Brazilian coffee and when it is made to be the same soft texture as the Bavarian cream, the espresso comes to have a gentle bitterness. The flavorful chocolate cream is made smoother by whipping the egg whites. Then the Bavarian cream, which has some tartness and acidity while it is hot, becomes just right when it cools. Try this chocolate babaloa, which links Brazil and Japan, and experience the cool forest breeze of Brazil within the naturally rich flavor of this sweet!