The Brazil nut oils are often used in cooking and to make soap. These hard-shelled fruits develop from small, reddish flowers that grow on the tree. Ripe cacao seeds are easily identified by shaking the fruit. If the shaking produces a rattling noise, the fruit is ready to be picked. Before extracting the seeds, cacao cultivators cut the fruit open and let the seeds ferment for a period.
Fermentation makes the beans easier to separate from the shell.
Once the seeds are isolated, they are dried in the sun or in a drying shed. The beans are then ready to processed into various products. To make cocoa or chocolate, cacao beans are ground into a paste and mixed with sugar and starch. Another product made from the cacao bean is cacao butter, or the oil of theobroma, which used in cosmetic products and coatings for pills.