The best way to drink a cacau caipirinha.

A couple of days ago I mentioned the fish that we ate on a remote beach in Bahia in the northeast of Brazil. When you’ve walked a couple of hours to get to a beach, you realise that you are basically a captive audience so if there’s only one thing on the lunch menu then you’d better hope you like it. As I said in the post, luckily for us it turned out to be one of the most delicious fish I’ve ever eaten.

On that same day, as we were waiting for the fish, a different guy came past and asked if we’d like a caipirinha. Regular readers will know I’m rather fond of Brazil’s classic cocktail and so won’t be surprised to hear that I immediately asked what fruits they have (caipirinhas can be made with all manner of fruit, not just lime). The first fruit the guy mentioned was Cacau and I stopped him right there. Cacau is the fruit whose seeds are used to make chocolate, but those seeds are surrounded by a sweet, refreshing pulp that tastes nothing like cocoa.

When the guy disappeared off to make the drinks, I expected him to return with a drink served in a plastic cup. As discussed before, this does not automatically mean it will be a bad drink and who could expect them to have anything else in such a remote location? But what he actually came back with was this:

Caipirinha de Cacau!

In case you don’t recognise it, the yellow container is an actual cacau fruit! Nice touch right? Way nicer than a plastic cup (or even a glass one for that matter), and isn’t there something extra-pleasing about eating an item enclosed in its former self? Like pumpkin soup served in a pumpkin or orange sorbet in a hollowed out orange.

We had ordered two and the other one that showed up looked like this:

You wait your whole life for a caipirinha served in a cacau fruit and then two come along at once…

The more observant of you will notice that the second fruit was not only bigger than the first one, but also a different colour (red). Wanna see what they look inside? Here you go:

Icy caipirinha de cacau. A great beach drink when you have nothing much to do for the rest of the day.

We were still sipping away at our drinks when the fish guy called us over to the barraca to eat lunch. As we sat down at the table we came across a problem – how could we put our cacau cups down? The fish guy showed us:

Take the lids off, turn them upside down, and they become the perfect drink stand! This was not only very cool, but also very satisfying – the perfect, natural drinking vessel.

Warning: this approach is less effective with other caipirinha fruits – don’t waste your time with limes, strawberries or lychees – they take ages to hollow out and at the end you only get a tiny sip of drink. Pineapples work just fine though…

Joking aside, could there be a better way to enjoy a delicious caipirinha on the beach?