Chocolate - The Wholesome Way

 Who loves chocolate? I do!
When I started the process of cutting out the additives and processed foods out of my life there was a couple of things I checked - whether I could still drink coffee and eat chocolate. While most store-bought chocolate is out of bounds, there are a few companies that make chocolate with little process involved. Problem is, most of them are sweetened with agave aaaand I don't like it that much. So I took to the internet!

It turns out, chocolate is actually quite simple to make, Kendahl, at Our Nourishing Roots has a great simple chocolate recipe, which I amended slightly to suit my tastes. So here it is!

Ingredients:
1 cup Cacao Butter
1 cup Cacao/Cocoa powder
2 tablespoons Honey

1/4 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Essence 

 First chop up the Cacao butter, and place it in a double boiler - the key is to melt this slowly and gently, you don't want anything to seize. I found it really hard to find Cacao butter locally and what I did find was ridiculously expensive. I ended up finding some reasonably priced organic cacao butter on iherb.com which I love, so if you're having trouble finding it locally, try it out.

Want to try iherb.com out? Use the code FMT194 and get up to $10 off on your first order - plus only $4 postage internationally!

(The cats love chocolate too, they wanted in straight away)

 Once the cacao butter is completely melted, slowly add the cocoa, constantly stirring. 

Next up is honey and vanilla - now - I like my chocolate rich and dark, so I only used 2TBS of honey and that was plenty. In my first attempt, I added 5 and it was just wayyy to much. It also had a really weird initial taste. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, and I think it is down to the honey. In lieu of honey you could also sub maple syrup or coconut sugar/raw brown sugar... just make sure it's melted and remember to stir!

It will end up looking like this, YUM. Take off the heat and let cool, stirring occasionally. It will cool down pretty quickly. Poor into your mould (I used a silicone loaf tin) and leave until it's hardened. 

Aaaaand it will turn out like this! Eat up!

Just remember, this is not tempered chocolate, so it is a little softer than store bought chocolate and it won't snap in the same way. You can temper chocolate at home... but i'm still learning about that!

I'd encourage anyone to give this a go - it's really not as scary as it looks, and once you get it right, the results are worth it. 

Good luck! 

Kiwi Biscuits

Today I thought i'd share you my favorite recipe. The worlds best Chocolate Chip cookies. I know, big call, but I love them. It was the first recipe I learnt and to this day I still get compliments on them. The best part? They're dead simple.

First, we start with softened butter, sugar and sweetened condensed milk.

Cream the three together with an electric beater until it's light and fluffy. People who cream butter and sugar properly mix it in enough so the sugar is completely dissolved, but i'm lazy and impatient so I just beat it until the mixture is noticeably lighter.

Then the flour and baking powder go into the mix. You'll see the recipe asks for a lot of flour, so don't mix it all in at once - you don't want the dough to be too dry, I usually find around an ounce less flour than the recipe asks for works well.

My favorite part!! Chocolate!! Any dark cooking chocolate will work but i'm very partial to Cadbury Energy chocolate, I couldn't find it when I was living in the states and used almond bark instead, in my opinion it just wasn't as good.

NOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM

Mix it all together (try not to eat to much of it!!) Roll it up in to balls and flatten them with a fork on a baking tray before popping it in the oven at 375ºF/180ºC for 15 mins. Again, this depends on the oven you're working with, my one at home usually needs 12-13 mins.

The final product! Don't they look good?!

Get. In. My. Belly.

Kiwi Biscuits

6oz butter

3oz sugar

3 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk

9oz flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

250g dark cooking chocolate, chopped up into big chunks