Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Salted Bittersweet Chocolates



I love chocolate, but hate paying a small fortune for good dark bars which, more often than not, contain refined white sugar. These salted chocolates are the perfect bite sized candies to satisfy my sugar cravings without any nasty chemicals or refined sweeteners. The coarse salt creates one of my favorite pairings of salty-sweet. E and I love these! (Chou thinks they're too bitter.)

Salted Bittersweet Chocolates
adapted from chocolatecoveredkatie.com
1 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted
1/4 cup local raw honey
1/4 teaspoon (or more) coarsely ground real salt (this one works well)
dash vanilla extract

Whisk together the cocoa powder and melted coconut oil until smooth. Stir in the remaining ingredients until well combined. In the winter when my kitchen is freezing, I do this in a double broiler. I put a small saucepan on the stove on my lowest heat setting until it starts to simmer. Turn it off, and put a larger glass bowl containing the cocoa powder and coconut oil over the steaming water before stirring in the remaining ingredients. This keeps the coconut oil from hardening when the cold honey is added to the mixture.

Line a cookie sheet with wax or parchment paper. Spoon or pipe the chocolate mixture onto the sheet, in bite-sized morsels.

Allow to harden (fridge or freezer will speed up the process) before placing in an airtight container and enjoying. I keep these in the fridge, although I'm sure they'd be just fine on my counter in the winter.


this post is linked up with Real Food Wednesdays 

4 comments:

  1. These look delicious. If I haven't [yet?] gone totally real food-crazy and don't own coconut oil, what's my good alternative? :)

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    1. Well there are recipes for using cocoa butter, which i'm sure you have ;) Honestly, I'd probably try melting a bar of unsweetened baking chocolate and adding the honey, salt, and vanilla. You might need to melt it with some butter so that it cooperates. Alternately you could try using butter in my recipe, but I don't think you'll get very hard chocolates even in the fridge. Maybe a lot less butter to cocoa powder? Or just freeze them? You have to let me know what you come up with!

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  2. I make something very similar, but never tried the drop version. I'm going to make these today! Thanks for the great idea!

    Jessica @ Bint Rhoda's Kitchen

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