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Cacao Trail · Maya Drink

Chocolate Maya (Cacao Drink)

Chocolate Maya (Cacao Drink) — street food from Toledo, Belize
📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Missvain / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

Toledo cacao went into Green & Black's Maya Gold, which in 1994 became the first product in the UK to carry the Fairtrade mark.

Roasted cacao beans are ground into a paste and whisked with hot water, corn masa, and sometimes chile or black pepper into a frothy, unsweetened drink. Village cooperatives and market stalls in Punta Gorda sell it to visitors and locals alike.

Why it's made this way: Toledo is Belize's cacao heartland, farmed by Mopan and Q'eqchi' Maya communities whose ancestors were among the first people anywhere to cultivate cacao.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3443 dishes from 118 countries. Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below. Photo credits.