How to: Homemade Chocolate!

One of my favourite topics/things in the world is chocolate. And even better is that it is surprisingly easier than you may think to make your own. Again kudos go to Wellness Mama for once again inspiring me to go DIY with something I never really thought of making from scratch. After making a few batches now, I have tweaked and added to the original recipe for my personal taste. However, with chocolate you can really be creative - the sky is the limit!

3 core ingredients

- Cocoa butter - depending on how much choc you plan on making, depends on how many chunks of this goodness you'll use. I would bet on around 1 cup

- 1 cup Cocoa powder (must be alkalised so that it mixes in smoothly)

- sweetener of some kind (honey - although you need a lot to combat the bitterness of the cocoa powder, icing sugar - will sweeten it with only a couple of teaspoons but you may not want to use a sugar derivative, the best I've found - maple syrup - you need 2 T for this (adjust with tasting) and it does not have a distinct flavour like the honey does) 

Then:

- vanilla essence (1 tsp) 

- coconut flakes (1/2 cup maybe?)

- walnuts (handful) or

- almonds (handful finely chopped) 

- some kind of chocolate mold. 

Method

Melt the cocoa butter in a double boiler or the homemade version. Once it's all melted, remove from heat and add the cocoa powder, sweetener and vanilla essence. Once well incorporated, mix in additions of choice (nuts, coconut, dried fruit, chilli powder etc) until smooth. Pour into molds and place in the fridge to set (usually takes about 20 mins). A quick tip when using silicone molds filled with sticky liquid, is to place the mold on a baking tray before you fill them for easy transfer to the fridge. Trust me I have learnt the hard way with this. Another tip: taste along the way for sweetness. Involve others if possible (how to make friends and influence people ;).

Honestly each time I make these, they get better and gobbled up sooner. They also make great gifts and treats. My only concern is that they should be kept in the fridge for fear of quick melting. I haven't quite found the beeswax equivalent for keeping chocolate solid at room temp. I can only imagine what goes into the average, commercial chocolate bar to keep it solid under most conditions, because the natural version starts to melt in your fingers!

Bonus tip: these will not last long!

Where to from now? I'm thinking, chilli chocolate, cranberry chocolate, orange chocolate and maybe some kind of caramel filling? That would certainly be a challenge!