Chocolate is made from cacao beans — or rather seeds — from the Theobroma cacao tree. This plant produces large, pod-like fruits, each containing 20–60 beans surrounded by a sticky, sweet-tart white pulp
Bean-to-bar chocolatiers, who make chocolate from scratch starting with fermented, dried beans, only use the word cacao for the pod and beans before they’re fermented. After fermentation, they call them cocoa beans.