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!