The Chocolate Sommelier Capturing The Magic of Cacao Pulp

Genevieve Leloup is a pioneering exception to the norm when it comes to chocolate educators. A certified chocolate taster (IICCT) and a chocolate sommelier for Chocolate Noise (the renowned chocolate-tasting outfit led by industry expert Megan Giller) Leloup has long had a love affair well beyond chocolate itself. She is in love with the cacao fruit.

Any chocolate sommelier worth their salt (or cacao in this case) is capable of providing a good overall understanding of cacao, including an explanation about the wonderfully sweet, tangy white flesh of cacao fruit known as mucilage or more adorably, “baba.” But how many would be able to tell you how to work with the aforementioned pulp, and how to accentuate its quintessential qualities of juicy texture and fresh bright flavor? It’s not anyone’s fault, as working with a medium as finicky as chocolate is usually an art mastered by professional chocolatiers, with most chocolate makers sticking to chocolate manufacturing rather than using the fresh fruit.

A Chocolate Fan Since Childhood

Leloup’s foray into chocolate began during her early childhood, thanks to her Swiss and Belgian roots. “Chocolate is hugely important in my family…it’s a ritual after every meal, as is sharing and talking about it. Chocolate tasting stems from my childhood […] comparing, criticising it was considered ‘serious business’ ” she says. She brought her passion for good chocolate with her when she moved from Belgium to the US. Every March, she would hold chocolate parties in her Brooklyn apartment. “I chose March because I’d decided it was the drabbest month of the year! It was my own brand of ‘ceremony’.” Moving within a crowd of artists and musicians, this designer and accomplished musician herself (she plays the piano and accordion) would host chocolate-themed suppers well into the wee hours. “It was jam sessions with brass bands and all things chocolate. Sometimes there were at least a hundred people crammed into my place!” she exclaims.

Discovering American Craft Chocolate in NYC

She recalls going into a local gourmet store one day, where she discovered the legendary Cacao Prieto (which has since ceased business). Further intrigued, she managed to wrangle a visit to Prieto’s factory and soon started attending the underground chocolate-tasting events being run by Megan Giller. Little did she know that one day, Giller would run a world-famous chocolate tasting company and that she would be one of its esteemed chocolate sommeliers. But well before that, Genevieve started her own chocolate-tasting and education company, Chocomotions which is still running successfully today. “When I first moved from Europe to the US, I would bring back tons of European fine chocolate because I just couldn’t find it around me here. Fast forward to today, and I’m now bringing American craft chocolate back to Europe for friends and family!’ Times have certainly changed.

A Fateful Encounter with Cacao Fruit

Leloup took a bean to bar making class from Michael Laiskonis in 2018, to better acquaint herself with the art of bean to bar chocolate. However, it was in September 2019 that she stumbled upon her first cacao pod, thanks to a small bodega in Brooklyn. ‘The taste of the fruit was a revelation. I realised that I needed to bring that to the table because people would never forget the uniqueness of this sort of experience.’ She explains that she had tasted cacao juice once before at a local chocolate festival, but it was a boxed juice that didn’t have any of the nuances of the fresh stuff.

Creating with Cacao Fruit

Cacao pulp truffles photo courtesy of Genevieve Leloup

From that point onwards, an introduction to the cacao fruit in some shape or form became part of her chocolate-tasting classes. ‘I would include pieces of dehydrated cacao pulp, like a fruit leather really, in my classes so that people could get a flavor of where it all begins.” In November 2020, the cacao pulp experimentations began. “I started with cacao pulp truffles. Blue Stripes was selling cacao pulp sugar, and my mind reeled with ideas of what I could do with that.” Genevieve grew up spending a lot of time in the kitchen with her Swiss mother who used to have plenty of baking and confectionary projects going on. It was only a matter of time before she found herself attracted to confectionery. “I love miniature things, requiring high levels of detail.”

How tricky was it to figure out how to translate the experience of cacao fruit pulp into chocolate and confectionary? “Not as easy as you think,” she affirms. “I didn’t want just any cacao pulp. I wanted a mind blowing one. I had to search far and wide for a long time, and in the end, the treasure was a lot closer to me the entire time. I already knew how to work with freeze-dried pulp – that’s easy. I also knew how to work with chocolate. But the fresh fruit? That was a lot of trial and error.” She adds, “I didn’t want to go with the usual ‘pate de fruit’ approach (jellified fruit). I wanted to find a more special way to embody the fruit, to incorporate it into something less sweet, all pleasure.”

Cacao Fruit Confections

Cacao pulp bonbons — Inside pulp bonbons photo courtesy of Genevieve Leloup

Genevieve has since started selling her exquisite creations exclusively at The Cocoa Store NYC, where she also works as an in-house chocolate sommelier. Customers and tasting participants are lucky to get a taste of these unusual bonbons and confections here. “The reactions of the fresh pulp, all that moisture with other ingredients, together with the sort of chocolate which would pair best with it, was where my chocolate sommelier skills came in." Her pilot series of cacao pulp dreams include a cacao pulp truffle with Tanzania-origin bean to bar chocolate, a sensorial cacao pulp caramel bonbon encased in fruity Peruvian Ucayali, which bursts juicily in the mouth (“I wanted to mimic that same explosion of fresh, juicy cacao fruit in the mouth,” she points out) and a creamy yet firm cacao pulp caramel which starts off buttery before evolving into a fruity, confiture like flavour reminiscent of an artisanal passionfruit jam from a small Parisian épicerie. “I had to try different origins to see how they would match. I wanted the flavours to marry perfectly.”

Mark Schimmel photo credit Leanneart Ruinen.jpg

So, which chocolates does this chocolate sommelier turned cacao pulp expert enjoy when she’s not busy conducting chocolate tastings or experimenting with new cacao pulp creations? “That’s a super tough question!” (We know. That’s why we love asking it.) “I love anything from Krak (Netherlands).” she declares. She particularly enjoys the latest Vietnamese-origin bar from Krak’s chocolate maker Mark Schimmel. “It delivers right away a complete explosion of fruit and citrus. It’s layered and instantly satisfying. It has a nice background of comforting chocolate notes. A well-balanced bar, with a nice sweetness.”

Fifth Dimension chocolate photo courtesy of Fifth Dimension

As for bonbons, she does enjoy a fair bit from Sweet Carambole (Netherlands) and 5th Dimension (UK).

What’s next on the cards for Genevieve? “I want to help put cacao pulp out in the market more. Most people don’t know what to do with it, and I want to be able to help change that. When I introduced cacao elements in my tasting, it was more than just wanting to do something different. I wanted people to fall in love with cacao itself.” From the looks of it, Genevieve is well on her way to doing just exactly that, starting with her magnificent, one-of-a-kind cacao pulp creations.