Hispanic History Month and Foodways Series: Chocolate and Cassava

Cassava chocolate cake, recipes below

In the viceroyalty of Peru, which included modern day Colombia, Iberians in urban centers purchased a sizeable number of enslaved Africans for cooking and other household tasks. Enslaved Africans also worked on large plantation cultivating the cacao plant which produced the key ingredient for making chocolate. People in Cartagena, Colombia loved chocolate so much “that there is not a negro slave but constantly allows himself a [delight] of it after breakfast; and the negro women sell [cakes made with corn, cassava, and chocolate] . . . about the streets,” wrote traveler Charles Stuart Cochrane in the early nineteenth century. The ingredients used to make these popular chocolate cakes illustrate the culinary syncretism that emerged at the intersection of African, Indian, and Iberian influences. Below are recipes for cassava chocolate cakes:

Cassava chocolate cake recipe: http://cookingdiva.net/blog/comments/la_receta_del_dia_cake_de_yuca_al_chocolate_y_coco_mandioca-chocolate_and_c/

Cassava chocolate avocado cake video recipe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfdVfAD5iGw