i know...yum! i had to start with this photo, well mostly because there is a rather large container filled with these in my fridge and it's 6am. believe me, this is restraint!
so yesterday, my new friend Christy came over and taught T and i how to make raw chocolate. it a bit labor intensive, but the result (both in taste and in nutrition are so worth it). i will try to recreate what i learned.
when Christy pull all of these tricks out of her bag, i had the thought "what am i getting myself into?" holy, cow! but really there are only 3-4 of these ingredients that are essential...look a bit closer and i'll note them for you. the cacoa powder, agave nectar, cocoa butter, these links will take you to the ingredients we specifically used.
i took a photo of the cocoa butter we used...this is the most expensive of the ingredients.
1. using 1/2 of the 1lb. block, shave the cocoa butter into small pieces.
2. pour hot water in a large bowl, put the cocoa butter shavings into a smaller bowl and nest the two. this will slowly melt the cocoa butter.
3. mix in 8 T. of raw cacao powder.
4. add 5 T. of agave nectar and mix.
5. add a little pinch of salt (preferably rock salt).
6. taste! adjust agave if a sweeter chocolate is desired.
7. let cool a bit.
8. pour into candy molds.
9. place candy molds on level surface (i think that was the hardest part for me) in the freezer until they pop out easily (15-20 minutes).
just in case you wanted to see what my counter looked like during the process...{wink}
there are many, many variations that can be done when making raw chocolate...
here are some that we made...we added raw coconut oil in with the butter and added ground raw cashews to the entire batch.
we also made a carob batch for T. yum!
we added many fun little bits into the molds...here are some examples...fresh nutmeg into the little pumpkins, cinnamon in to some of the molds, goji berries in the hearts, coconut in the snowflakes, almond butter cups to name a few. if you look a the first picture up top, the lighter color unicorns are carob and i put little flecks of coconut for the horns. getting creative with this part was probably my favorite (second to licking the spoon of course).
here are the recipes Christy shared with me. we basically used the recipe on the bottom (100g=roughly 1/2 lb. of cocoa butter)
i wish you were here so i could share some of my little treats with you.
with gratitude,
hillary
