I Know Where the Best Tablea in the Universe Comes From — And It's Not From Any Store

I Know Where the Best Cacao Tablea in the Universe Comes From — And It's Not From Any Store

I am going to say something with full confidence and zero apology: the best tablea I have ever tasted in my entire life was not bought from a store, not ordered online, not discovered at a food expo, and not featured in any travel magazine.

It was made by my mom. In our kitchen. From cacao beans she bought at the public market, roasted herself, peeled by hand, winnowed, ground, and molded into small round tablets using a puto cheese molder.

The best tablea in the whole world. The universe, rather.

I am not being dramatic. I am being accurate.

First — You Need to Understand Where This Comes From

My mom is Boholana. Born and raised in Bohol — the province that the rest of the Philippines quietly knows as one of the spiritual homes of cacao culture in this country. The history of Bohol tablea dates back to the Spanish colonial period. Over time, local farmers perfected the art of making tablea — pure cacao tablets used for making traditional hot chocolate. The process of creating these tablets has been passed down through generations, preserving the authentic flavor that Bohol is known for. 

My mom is one of those generations. She did not learn this from a workshop or a YouTube tutorial. She learned it the way most important things are learned in Filipino families — by watching, by doing, by growing up in a household where this was simply what you did.

Traditionally, tablea is used to make a hot chocolate drink called sikwate, often enjoyed during special occasions and family gatherings. The preparation and sharing of sikwate is a cherished tradition that brings families and communities together, reflecting the warm and hospitable nature of Boholanos. 

In our family, sikwate is not for special occasions. It is for every morning and every evening. It has been that way my entire life. And it started with her.

The Cacao Tree in the Backyard

Here is something that will surprise you if you did not grow up in a Bohol household back in the day: almost everyone had a cacao tree.

Not as a novelty. Not as a gardening project. Just — as part of the yard, the way you have a mango tree or a coconut tree or a malunggay that nobody planted on purpose but is simply always there. Cacao was a backyard crop the way kamote is a backyard crop. Ordinary, abundant, and taken completely for granted until it was gone.

We had one in Bohol. I remember it clearly because every summer vacation as a kid — and summer vacation in Bohol is one of the best memories I have — part of the ritual was eating the cacao fruit straight from the tree. You crack it open, and inside are the beans covered in a white, fleshy pulp. You put the bean in your mouth and chew it, working the pulp off the seed. It is sweet and sour at the same time. Fruity. Bright. Refreshing in a way that is completely different from anything you would associate with chocolate. I cannot fully describe it — you have to taste it to understand — but it is one of those flavors that stays with you for the rest of your life.

After the chewing, the cleaned beans go to my mom. And that is where the real work begins.

Bohol is one of the recognized cacao-producing provinces of the Philippines, and the tradition of backyard cacao farming that I grew up seeing is part of why. 

The Tools — And Let's Clear Up the Confusion

Before we get to the process, we need to talk about the equipment. Because the internet has been getting this wrong for years and it is time someone from an actual Bohol sikwate household set the record straight.

We have the complete traditional setup in this house. Two tools. Both important.

The first is the batirol — the vessel itself. Ours is made of metal, narrow with a high-neck design, tall enough to allow rapid whisking without the liquid spilling over. The shape is not decorative. That narrow neck is functional — it keeps the heat in and the foam contained while you work. You can find batirol made of aluminum, copper, or brass. The design has not changed much across generations because it does not need to. It works perfectly as is.

The second is the bornejo — the wooden tool with a long handle and a spiky head, placed inside the batirol and rolled rapidly between both palms. This is what dissolves the tablea, creates the foam, and gives sikwate its signature frothy texture. If you have ever watched someone make traditional sikwate and wondered how the foam gets that thick — it is the bornejo. Pure technique, zero electricity required.

Now here is where it gets interesting. If you search for these tools online you will find a small war in the comments sections of food blogs and cooking dictionaries. Some sources call the wooden tool the batirol. Others say batirol is the pot. Some say the wooden whisker is the batidor. Someone from Jagna, Bohol specifically once corrected a food writer online saying the wooden whisker is called the manoniljo in that part of Bohol.

My mom calls the wooden tool the bornejo. She has called it that her entire life. Everyone she grew up with in Bohol called it that.

I am not going to argue with an 80-year-old Boholana who has been making sikwate from scratch longer than most food bloggers have been alive. In this house it is the bornejo. Full stop. 😄

The foam that comes out of a properly whisked batirol using a bornejo is something no wire whisk or electric milk frother has ever fully replicated. If you have these tools in your kitchen, you already know exactly what I mean. If you have never seen them — look for them the next time you visit Bohol. Some households still have them. Ours does.

How She Makes It — The Full Process

This is the part I am sharing as a quiet family secret. Not a business. Not a brand. Just the way it has always been done in our household, preserved exactly as my mom learned it in Bohol.

Step 1 — Source the dried cacao beans. She goes to the public market and buys dried cacao beans. In Bohol, this was sometimes from their own tree — the summer ritual I described above. Here in Surigao, from whoever is selling at the market that day. The quality of the beans matters. She knows what good beans look and feel like. She has known for decades.

Step 2 — Roast for 25 to 30 minutes. The beans go into a pan over the fire and are roasted slowly, stirred continuously to keep them from burning. The whole house fills with a smell that I have no other way to describe except as the smell of home. Deep, warm, slightly smoky, unmistakably cacao. If you have ever smelled raw cacao being roasted in a Filipino kitchen, you know exactly what I mean. If you have not — I am genuinely sorry. You are missing something.

Step 3 — Peel. After roasting, the shells need to come off. This is done by hand, meticulously, one bean at a time. While peeling, she sorts. Any bean that does not look right — discolored, damaged, suspicious in any way — gets set aside and thrown out. She is not accepting substandard beans into this tablea. Quality control at this stage is non-negotiable and completely manual.

Step 4 — Winnow. After peeling, the remaining shell fragments and loose skin need to be separated from the clean cacao nibs. This is winnowing — pouring the beans slowly from one container to another in a light breeze or in front of a fan, letting the lighter shell pieces blow away while the heavier nibs fall clean into the receiving container. It is an old technique, older than any kitchen gadget you own. It works perfectly.

Step 5 — Grind. The clean cacao nibs go to the grinder. We have a manual grinder (in Bohol) — the kind that clamps to the edge of a table and takes real effort to turn. If you do not have one, most local markets in the Philippines have grinding services where you can bring your nibs and have them ground on the spot. What comes out of the grinder is a thick, dark, intensely aromatic paste — technically called cacao liquor or cocoa mass, though in our house it has never needed a fancy name. It is just the ground cacao. It smells extraordinary.

Step 6 — Mold. The paste goes into the molder. These days my mom uses a plastic molder — the same kind used for puto cheese, with small round compartments that give each tablet its familiar disc shape. Fill each cavity, smooth the top, and then into the refrigerator for about 15 minutes until they harden and pop out cleanly.

Back in the old days, before plastic molders existed in every kitchen supply store, the paste was shaped by hand into small rounds and left to air dry on a flat surface for a full day. No refrigerator needed. The process was slower. The result was identical — small, dark, pure cacao tablets that dissolve into hot water and become something that no commercial product has ever quite matched.

That is the entire process. No sugar added at any point. No corn starch, no wheat germ, no fillers of any kind. Put simply, tablea is ground-up cacao beans — and in my mom's version, that is exactly and only what it is. 1000.1% pure cacao. Nothing else.

Why This Version Is Different From What You Buy at the Store

Most commercial tablea products — even the ones marketed as traditional or artisanal — contain additional ingredients to improve texture, or reduce production cost. Corn starch is common. Some brands add sugar directly into the tablet. Others use fillers that dilute the cacao content without necessarily announcing it prominently on the packaging.

My mom's tablea has none of that. Which means every cup of sikwate made from it delivers the full, uncut nutritional content of pure roasted cacao — the flavonoids, the minerals, the antioxidants, the magnesium and potassium that give cacao its genuinely health-supportive reputation. No dilution. No shortcuts. No compromise.

This matters more than most people realize. Cacao is packed with antioxidants, particularly flavonoids — and the concentration of those compounds in a pure homemade tablet is significantly higher than in a commercial product cut with fillers. When my mom dissolves her tablea in the batirol using the bornejo every evening, the sikwate in that cup is not the same drink as what you get from a store-bought brand. The base ingredient is doing far more work.

I drink sikwate every morning and every evening. I have written about this habit before on this blog. I always described it as a personal preference — my alternative to coffee, something I genuinely love. But now I understand it more completely. It is not just a preference. It is an inheritance. She handed me this habit cup by cup, year by year, from childhood to now. I just never fully traced it back to its source until I started writing this post.

The Tradition Behind the Drink

One thing that strikes me every time I think about this is how unbroken the chain actually is.

Bohol tablea holds a special place in the hearts of the locals — it is not just a food item, it is part of their cultural identity. The sikwate tradition in Bohol survived Spanish colonization, survived the rise of coffee culture in the late nineteenth century, survived the industrialization of the food supply, and survived the arrival of every instant chocolate powder product that has ever tried to replace it on a Filipino breakfast table.

It survived in households like my mom's because people like my mom simply never stopped doing it.

Despite the rising popularity of coffee, sikwate was still the most consumed drink in the Philippines for centuries — Filipinos drank it in the morning instead of coffee, and in the afternoon instead of tea. My mom never made the switch. Not once.  Sikwate mixed with Quaker Oats — the same ritual she grew up with in Bohol, carried intact across decades and across provinces to Surigao City.

Coffee took over the rest of the country. This house did not get the memo. I am glad.

You Can Try This at Home

You do not need a cacao tree in your backyard to make your own tablea — though if you have one, use it. The summer ritual of chewing the fresh cacao pulp off the beans before drying them is something I want everyone to experience at least once.

If you are starting from dried beans, the full process is exactly what I described above. The equipment list is short: a pan for roasting, patience for the peeling and winnowing stages, a manual grinder or access to a market grinding service, and a puto cheese molder from any kitchen supply store. Total cost is minimal. Total effort is real — this is not a quick recipe. It is a process that takes time and attention, which is exactly why the result tastes the way it does.

If you are in Bohol and want to experience this tradition from the source, the province has producers who still follow authentic small-batch methods. 

As for our homemade version — we are not selling it. This is personal consumption only. A family tradition that was never meant to be a business and has no plans to become one. But if you are curious and you know us, you can send a message. We will see. 😄

Last Thing Before I close this Tab

I have been drinking sikwate my entire life. I grew up in a house where the smell of roasting cacao was as ordinary as the smell of rice cooking. I did not think of it as a cultural practice or a health habit or anything worth documenting. It was just home.

Now, at this point in my life — running my own health diagnostics, tracking cholesterol numbers, paying attention to what goes into my body every single day — I understand that what my mom was doing in that kitchen was never just making a drink. She was maintaining a system. A centuries-old, Bohol-born, passed-down-through-generations system that happens to align with modern nutritional science in ways she never needed a research paper to confirm.

The batirol is still in the kitchen. The bornejo is still in the kitchen. The cacao beans are still coming from the public market. The tablea is still being made by hand in the same way she learned to make it before I was born.

The best tablea in the universe. I stand by it completely.

-Mavs

System Disclaimer: The information in this post is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a licensed healthcare provider before making changes to your health routine. Think of this post as a diagnostic report — your doctor is the one who runs the actual repair.