I don’t know about you, but if there is one thing I’ve found since embarking on our gluten free, dairy free, soy free lifestyle, it’s that so many things start tasting like coconut! If it’s not coconut oil in place of butter in a recipe, it’s coconut milk instead of cow’s milk, or coconut flour in place of regular wheat flour. Don’t get me wrong, I love coconut and I’m all for it’s many and varied health benefits, but sometimes I just get a bit sick of it as it pops up in so many recipes.
When I first made dairy free chocolate from scratch for the family, I used coconut oil. It is delicious! The result is a rich, smooth chocolate with a hint of coconut – a bit like a bounty bar really. It was a huge hit with the kids, and I love it too. But sometimes, I just want plain old chocolate. Nothing fancy, not flavoured, just chocolately chocolate.
As a special treat, I bought some cacao butter the other day and this morning the girls and I whipped up a batch of lovely, rich, luscious, decadent dark chocolate – without the taste of coconut.
Cacao butter is relatively easy to find in most health food shops – I can even get it out here in the sticks without having to resort to online ordering.
You can mix it up a little if you want to play around and experiment though. Sometimes we might sprinkle on some coconut flakes (there’s that coconut again!), or for a fruit and nut hit, we’ll add in some almonds and goji berries or currants.
Raw Chocolate
Ingredients
- 35 g Cacao butter or coconut oil
- 3 tbsp Rice Malt Syrup
- 2 tbsp cacao powder
Instructions
- Over the lowest heat possible, melt together the cacao butter and rice malt syrup.
- Once liquid, whisk in the cacao powder until smooth.
- Pour into small moulds (it's very rich!!)
- Refrigerate until set.
