Chocolate bars

Success on the first try, Raw Cacao Truffles!

In my year of DIY, of eliminating that which I purchase prepared and replace it with that which I can make for myself from scratch, I have tackled bread, pasta, nut and grain milks, sauerkraut, Kombucha, raising chickens, tending honeybees, goat cheese, veggie gardening, whew!  It's nice to reflect, gives me a feeling of accomplishment!  As I look into my pantry and refrigerator, I seek out more opportunities by simplifying by increasing my repertoire of skills.  My husband loves chocolate, especially dark chocolate.  I'll buy three packs of chocolate bars every time I shop at Trader Joes to satisfy him, and he'll always let me know when the supply has run out.  Looking on the Internet it seems that true chocolate is a complex matter involving some equipment I do not possess.  But my taking my search a little deeper I began to find some recipes that would fit my kitchen.  What I ended up making was more of a raw cacao truffle than a true dark chocolate bar.  Here's the recipe I used homemade-chocolate.

1/4 cup sugar
1 cup cacao powder or nibs
1/8 cup coconut oil
1/8 cup cacao butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of Himalayan salt
Pinch if cinnamon

I have a small coffee grinder I use for espresso.  I gave it a good cleaning and then ground up the sugar for 15 seconds or so to a fine powder.  Then I added some of the cacao and blended it up some more.  That's all the capacity of my grinder so I dumped that powder out and ground up the rest of the cacao.  Next I added the salt and cinnamon.

Next, in a double boiler, which means a small pot floating in a larger pot of water over low heat, the cacao and sugar is slowly melted, stirring occasionally.  After a few minutes, add the oil and cacao butter and continue to stir until smooth and melted.  Next add the vanilla.  My chocolate got a little lumpy when I added the vanilla so I added another teaspoon of coconut oil and that helped smooth it out again.

Now pour this chocolate into a mold.  I have silicone molds I use for soap making, but you could just line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and make a big sheet.  I set the chocolate in the fridge and after maybe 45 minutes it had solidified and I popped the chocolates out.  It looked like it would melt if I left it out, so I stored them in the fridge.  They are really yummy, but a little grainy.  I would spend a little more time in the coffee grinder next time.  It would be yummy to experiment with coconut, rose petals, lavender, orange peel...stay tuned!

Just made these for the second time and had a lot of success using honey instead of sugar.  It made the consistency of the chocolates smoother and creamier here's my recipe for the honey chocolates.

Honey Pollen Chocolates with Blueberries

1/4 cup honey

3/4 cup cacao

1/4 cup mixture of coconut oil and cacao butter

pinch of himalayan salt

1 teaspoon bee pollen

1 tablespoon dried blueberries

I followed the same directions as above but I sprinkled the molds with the pollen and dried blueberries and poured the melted chocolate on top.