A healthier and easier way to make chocolate. Make sure to replace your ordinary sugar with coconut sugar as the ordinary sugar doesn’t ‘dissolve’ properly or that it ‘sinks to the bottom’ or it can be a bit crystally or crunchy. It’s true this can happen.
In this post, we are going to solve all of that so that you can make sure your coconut sugar dissipates evenly throughout your homemade chocolate every time. I’ll share an easy recipe too, with only 4 simple ingredients. So let’s have a little chat about coconut sugar first and get this mystery sorted!
So what actually is coconut sugar?
Coconut sugar is produced from coconut flower blossoms. Coconut sugar is produced with a two-step process. “It starts with harvesting or “tapping” the flower bud stem of a coconut tree. Farmers make a cut on the spadix and the sap starts to flow from the cut into bamboo containers. The sap collected is then transferred into large woks and placed over moderate heat to evaporate the moisture content of the sap. The sap is translucent and is about 80% water. At this point it is known as coconut neera or nira (Indonesia), and as coconut toddy (Sri Lanka), maprau (Thailand), or lagbi (North Africa). As the water evaporates, it starts to transform into a thick sap syrup. From this form, it may or may not be further reduced to crystal, block or soft paste form.” Coconut sugar has a gentle caramel-like flavour and is lower on the glycemic index than regular sugar.
So let’s get on to the best way to use coconut sugar, coconut oil, cocoa powder in chocolate. I prefer to use coconut sugar (rather than a healthy sweet syrup like maple syrup for example) in my chocolate because it helps keep it firmer (chocolate gets a bit softer with syrup).
Ingredients:
6 tablespoons cacao butter (chopped)
3 tablespoons coconut sugar
5 tablespoons cacao powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of coconut oil
Instructions:
1.
Grind your coconut sugar down to a finer consistency (this 'finer' nature will allow it to dissipate evenly through the chocolate, ensuring that it doesn't sink to the bottom whilst the chocolate is setting).
2.
Chop your cacao butter into fine pieces (this makes the process of melting much easier). You might also have cacao butter drops (in which case use heaped tablespoons to measure).
3.
Get a saucepan and add about an inch of water. Place a heatproof glass bowl on top of the pan (see the video above for a demo) and then heat the water on a low to medium heat.
4.
Melt the cacao butter in the glass bowl, adding the coconut sugar and vanilla. Mix in regularly over the next few minutes.
5.
When the cacao butter has melted add the cacao powder and mix in thoroughly.
Pour into a chocolate mould or a parchment paper lined container.
6.
Set in the freezer (quickest) or in the fridge.
7.
Pop out of your moulds when set and enjoy!
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