And no, I don't mean melting down milk chocolate and pouring it into moulds!

I mean: make it from scratch!

The first thing you should know that unless you have a conching machine (or possibly a thermomix – I suspect you might get some fantastic results if you could use a thermomix to conch/continually stir the chocolate for say, twelve hours) your chocolate will not taste exactly like Lindt. 

But it's not bad! 

I've tried making chocolate a number of different ways now. I started with "raw" chocolate which is typically made up with raw cacao powder, coconut oil and dates and prunes. I make this up into balls and they're seriously delicious. 

 

 
 

My kids love these. They're really chocolately, and no sugar!

My incredibly healthy yoga-teacher friend Meg taught me how to make these. 

 

Hi, Megs.

 

 

Now back to something slightly naughtier that contains sugar. 

The very first go I had at something with the texture of chocolate turned out like this:

 

It tasted like chocolate, but see those tiny white flecks? Pure icing sugar. 

Note to self: to use powdered sugar in chocolate, it needs to be powdered. 

Next, when I was at the Berry Co-op buying pig food, I popped in next door to the Treat Factory and found some chocolate moulds for about $4 each.

And my third attempt, using agave syrup instead of sugar, looked like this:

 

They don't look bad, right?!

Anyway, here's how I make the raw chocolate balls, using a recipe adapted from Meg.

 

RAW CHOCOLATE BALLS

• Quarter cup of organic coconut oil
• Half cup of pitted organic prunes
• 1 cup fresh organic dates
• half tsp vanilla extract
• half cup raw cacao powder (unsweetened cocoa powder works too)

Melt the coconut oil to liquid form over a low heat. Whiz all the ingredients in a food processer until completely amalgamated. 

When smooth, roll into balls and into coconut. Store in fridge.

HOMEMADE CHOCOLATE

• Half a cup of cocoa butter (in liquid form)
• Half a cup of organic cocoa/cacao
• Half a cup of full cream milk powder
• 3 tsp agave syrup (I think this'll work with maple syrup – will try this next)
• Half a tsp salt
• Half a tsp cinnamon

Melt the cocoa butter to liquid form over low heat. Mix all ingredients into the butter and stir really well. Pour into moulds and set in the fridge. 

Enjoy!

xxx

PS My apologies on the WEIRD formatting! Typepad is not allowing spacing!! Grr. 

PPS I'll draw the bikkie giveaway tomorrow!

xxx