Free your chocolate

When I wrote my last post, I planned to take a few days break while I visited family in Tasmania. I thought I should come back to my blog on Monday next week, and maybe do a post reflecting on the fact that I’m staring down the barrel of a sugar-free (and therefore chocolate free) Easter. I’d talk about how my very supportive husband decided that we should have Easter cheeses instead of Easter chocolate, and how I felt this was a very ‘off the grid’ thing to do, and that I decided to call it Cheester.

Well, two days into visiting mum and dad, and I’ve thrown all those ideas out the window because I just made delcious, fructose free chocolate from scratch! Now THAT’s off the grid. Thought I'd better write down what I did before I forgot the details. Here is a sneak peek for those who can't be bothered scrolling:

(For those thinking “huh? There are a range of ‘sugar free’ chocolates available from every health food store you care to name, not to mention the health food aisle at the supermarket”, here’s a quick run-down on why I’m making this from scratch. Basically commercial sugar-free chocs (and most sugar-free sweets as well) contain maltitol (or a similar sweetener) which is a sugar substitute. Although these are not the same as cane sugar, many of them act like cane sugar when they enter the body. For example, maltitol becomes glucose and fructose just like sugar. So no, I can’t have those if I want to stay off fructose. Also where’s the fun in that? I’ve never made chocolate before, I feel like Nigella Lawson right now.)

The idea for making chocolate started back in Melbourne when I found some blocks of 100% cacao in Jones the Grocers. The blocks are by Willy’s World Class Cacao and Chocolates from the UK. I had watched a TV series about Willy who is a passionate chocoholic who wanted to make and sell these 100% cacao as a gourmet cooking ingredient. He sources the cacao beans from places like Venezuela and Madagascar. You can order the blocks online and have them shipped from the UK, but Jones the Grocer stocks them in Australia, so I happily purchased two 180g blocks of the Madagascan black 100% cacao (at $20 a pop) and took one with me to Tasmania to present to mum and dad who are also trying to be fructose free.

For anyone who hasn’t tried 100% cacao before, let me tell you it is strong, bitter stuff. It tastes like the very essence of chocolate, minus the sugar and cream.

Mum and I decided to try making some (edible) chocolate from this, and with the help of a friendly local health food store (who not only gave us a recipe but supplied us with the right ingredients), we were able to do this pretty simply. The recipe handout is credited to Roar Vanilla. It called for cacao powder and agave syrup (which has a lot of fructose), so we had to experiment a little. We also added soy lecithin as an emulsifier which I'll explain further below.

But without further ado, here is our version, adapted from theirs, which is 100% fructose free, very simple, and delicious. 

Fructose-free chocolate

• 80 grams cacao butter, chopped finely (we sourced ours from the health food store)
• 40 grams chopped/grated 100% cacao
• 3 Tablespoons dextrose syrup (see below)
• 3 x rock salt crystals (we used Himalayan salt- long story but mum wanted some anyway so we happened to have it. I’m sure normal salt would do!) You can leave salt out altogether if you choose
• 1 tsp lecithin granules soaked in 1 Tbs boiling water (health food store had these but we also saw them at the supermarket health food section)

Dextrose syrup:

Stir 100g boiling water and 230g dextrose in a saucepan on the stove until the dextrose is dissolved completely. It should go from being a white liquid to a crystal clear one (see pics). You could halve this recipe as you don’t need much (I used 3 tablespoons) but it seemed easier to do all the stirring in this quantity than a smaller one.

When dextrose is dissolved and syrup is clear, take off the heat and place to one side.

Note: Dextrose is glucose, so you may be able to just use glucose syrup from the baking section of the supermarket instead of making the above. Glucose syrup is much thicker than the syrup described above, so I’m not 100% sure it would work the same- if you try it, let me know how it goes!

To make the chocolate:
Place at least 2cm of water in a pot and put a bowl on the top to make a bain-marie. Don’t let the bowl touch the water.  Heat the pot until the water boils, then remove from the heat.

Add cacao butter to the bowl.Stir until melted. It melts pretty quickly into a clear but yellowish oily liquid

I'm melting...

Add salt crystals (optional)- these will dissolve during the next steps.

Add 3 tablespoons of the dextrose syrup. You can add more if you wish- depends on how sweet you want it to be.

Add 2 teaspoons of the watery-lecithiny mixture (see pic of what our lecithin mixture looked like- ours was not fully dissolved in the hot water but the lecithin granules were soft and pretty quickly broke down further in the chocolate mixture).

Lecithin is an emulsifier, and we wanted it to help the syrup and cacao butter to mix better- which on our observation it seemed to. The original recipe did not have this step at all, so you could leave it out if you prefer, but I’ve left it in because we think that it helped the texture of our chocs.

Add half of the 100% cacao, stir until it melts into the mixture, and then add the second half and do the same.

Ours had a bit of a foamy look on the surface as you can see. I think on reflection this was the lecithin and perhaps I should have left it to dissolve further. However, it didn’t affect the texture (which was entirely smooth) or taste of the final chocs.

The liquid at this point was very thin, much thinner than I was expecting to be honest.  

Pour into molds or ice trays.

Ours made 36 chocs- 16 in the heart mold and 16 in the ice cube  tray.

Put in the freezer or fridge to set. Ours went in the fridge and by about ½ hour they were set enough to pop out of the mold and eat. Here they are again.

My babies. I'm so proud.

As it doesn't have any cream or milk, it obviously makes a pretty dark chocolate which we estimate tastes about the same as 80% dark chocolate. Mum pronounced it ‘as good as Lindt’. The texture is chocolate heaven- it melts so deliciously in the mouth. When I do it again, I’ll experiment with adding some chopped hazelnuts or similar to the chocolate in the last step. Yum!

I guess the only other thing worth posting is the cost. The cacao 100% bar was $20 and we used 40g so $4.44 worth. The cacao butter was $19 for 250g and we used 80g, so $6.08 worth.  So the main ingredients cost $10.52 for 36 chocs.  Up to you whether you think it is worth it- I loved doing it and will enjoy experimenting with different versions.

If you do try this, be sure to let me know, below. I’d love to hear how you go, especially if you experiment with any modifications.

So that’s it. A long post, but a pretty easy recipe in the end, and the result was fabulous. I’ll be making more of these at home for Easter, although we might keep the cheese idea as well. J