Dairy-Free, Raw Chocolates!

Attention all chocoholics, put down your bar of conventional sugar-laden chocolate and check this recipe out. Now before I proceed, I must say that I am very lucky to work for an amazing online retailer who sell a plethora of delicious ingredients. I love my job. I get to test out all these crazy interesting products and taste these amazing health foods. Something that came to our attention a few years ago was cacao powder. Now cacao powder is possibly one of my favourite ingredients that we sell.

A bit of a background into cacao; now this superfood powder is not to be confused with cocoa. Trust me, after you taste cacao, you won’t ever go back to cocoa! The main difference is how these powders are produced. Cocoa is extracted from the bean by a variety of methods, including roasting and drying the beans. Cacao is created by grinding the bean and separating the butter from the solids. Basically its loads healthier for you because it retains most its nutritional  benefits unlike cocoa which loses many nutrients in the production process.

Now back to chocolates. Nom.

So lets be honest, homemade presents can be SO much better than shop brought gifts. The chocolate recipe below can be adapted to suit your preferences. I filled mine with a variety of different things to give you some ideas, but really the possibilities are endless! Now these raw chocolates really need to be stored somewhere cold so ensure if you are giving them as a gift that you tell the recipient to store them in the fridge. That is of course if they don’t gobble them up as soon as they get them!

This recipe makes 30 chocolates. The mould I used was from lakeland. Silicone moulds are best as the chocolates pop out really easily! This recipe was inspired by the amazing Galia from Choc Chick. She makes amazing chocolate making kits for newbie chocolatiers! Alternatively, if you are looking to purchase great value, large packs of cacao butter and cacao powder  then click the links!

Ingredients:

• 100g Cacao Butter
• 5 tablespoons Raw Cacao Powder
• 100ml Sweet Freedom
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla powder
• Fillings – I used green khorog raisins, glace cherries, crystallised ginger, pecan nuts and peanut butter!

Method:

1. Put a heat-proof bowl over a pan of boiling water and melt the butter in the bowl.
2. Add the cacao powder and the sweetener to the melted butter.
3. Add the chocolate to the moulds. Now you leave the chocolate as it is, or you can add fillings. If you are adding a filling, half fill the moulds and place in the freezer for 20 mins. Remove and add your toppings and then fill the mould up with more chocolate mixture. Freeze for another 15 minutes or until set!
4. Serve, eat, demolish!

So with the fruit and nuts, I just added to the chocolate and they had a flavour reminiscent of fruit and nut chocolate bars – go figure! I think my absolute favourite was the peanut butter filled chocolates. They reminded me of the popular American peanut butter chocolates. They were SO good, suffice to say these got gobbled up very quickly! With the ginger, I sprinkled this into the mould first and then filled with chocolate. I think that raw chocolates will definitely be popping up more on this blog – so stay tuned!

~ Enjoy! ~