At first, the flavor of cacao beverages was unattractive for the Spaniards, while the abundant foam that smeared the lips was frankly repulsive for them. Gradually, the strange flavors of Mesoamerican condiments were replaced by sugar, and the sweetened beverage acquired the name "chocolate." which according to the physician and botanist Francisco Hernández, originally designated an indigenous beverage prepared with equal parts of cacao and ground seeds of the ceiba tree.

Creole ladies did not fail to appreciate the cosmetic virtues of cacao while its medicinal properties were a subject of great concern for the Europeans. Fuentes y Guzmán described the uses of cacao butter "physicians have and apply it as a useful medicine and as a beneficial and soothing ointment, for all kinds of skin diseases: and they apply it to the liver, and the lung, while it is also yearned for by the ladies for the skin."

In Guatemala, the decline of cacao harvests was a recurring concern until the end of the Colonial period, when the dwindling production became insufficient even for the local market. The frustration caused by the ever growing competition of South American cacao may be seen in friar Francisco Ximénez's words: "The best know is absolutely the one grown in the town of Sonsonate, thereafter that of Xoconusco, and thereafter that of Guazacapán. That of Caracas is bad, and of bad taste. And worst is that of Guayaquil." In 1799, the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del Pais, a progressive society awarded Doctor Antonio García Redondo for his research, Memoria para el Fomento de las Cosechas de Cacao y Otros Ramos de la Agricultura (Memoir on the Promotion of Cacao Crops and Other Branches of Agriculture), but these efforts did not translate into an improved production, which continued to decline. Not so, however, Guatemalan's taste for chocolate, as shown by the nineteenth-century poet José Batres Montúfar in his portrait of the habits of a Creole gentleman in Late Colonial times: