How to make chocolate with cocoa powder in ten minutes with 3 ingredients. Customize this inexpensive homemade chocolate recipe with toppings. Make your own vegan milk chocolate or healthy dark chocolate bars for snacks or gift-giving. 
Learn how to make chocolate easily and inexpensively Enjoy them yourself or create custom chocolate bars to give as gifts! It only takes 10 minutes to mix up a bar of homemade chocolate, and under half an hour to harden. The resulting homemade chocolate bar lasts up to two weeks.
Preparing commercial chocolate involves several steps, including fermenting and dehydrating cacao beans, roasting, shell removal, nib breaking, grinding, and conching. You can make homemade chocolate from cocoa powder in just 10 minutes, using a few pantry ingredients. You can save money, avoid additives and easily customize it to meet dietary, flavor, and shape preferences.
Keep your healthy homemade chocolate bars as your own treat, or wrap them in gold paper and give them as gifts. Or use your stock to make other homemade chocolate recipes including my Twix cups, homemade chocolates and my chocolate Easter eggs or my homemade chocolates in a box.
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Ingredients
1. Cocoa Powder: Remember to choose the highest quality cocoa powder you can to achieve the deepest chocolate flavor. Cacao powder can also be used, it's more nutritious because it is less processed, but it can be more bitter.
2. Cacao butter: Food grade cacao butter is probably the most important ingredient of chocolate. It gives homemade chocolate that silky feeling you get with store-bought, also a snap. Coconut oil also works.
3. Maple Syrup: The maple syrup can be exchanged for another liquid sweetener, such as date syrup, monk fruit or agave. My preference is date paste or date syrup for flavor, but maple syrup is more convenient.
4. Vanilla, salt for flavor enhancement.
Optional: You also will need milk powder if you want to make dairy free milk chocolate, plus consider toppings such as sprinkles, cacao nibs, dried fruits, raisins, nuts, and more.
How to Make
Here are general steps, but the full recipe for this chocolate diy is in the recipe card at bottom of this post.
Step 1: Put the cacao butter in a heat-safe pyrex measuring cup sitting in a pot of simmering water (this is a double-boiler), and stir until it melts, about 2-3 minutes. Don't use the microwave and don't allow any water to hit the inside. Remove from heat and set aside.
Step 2: Add in the cocoa powder, maple syrup, and vanilla and stir again.
Step 3: Pour the homemade chocolate mixture into your mold, scrapping the container with a rubber spatula. Add any toppings now or to the mold before you pour.
Step 4: Avoid bloom, or a white streak to your chocolate, by allowing the chocolate to reach room temperature before chilling. Then, set the mold in the refrigerator for 1 hour or freezer for 30 minutes to solidify. When they are ready, remove your homemade chocolate bars from their mold.
How to Make Milk Chocolate
To make this chocolate bar recipe into a milk chocolate bar, you'll want to add a milk powder. You can use any milk powder for the recipe to work, but to keep it dairy free or vegan you'll need a plant based milk powder such as this oat milk powder, or even coconut or rice.
Storage of Chocolate
Once solid, wrap your bar foil or candy foil papers, and store in sealed container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks or in the freezer for 3 months. This chocolate is considered untempered and thus can melt at room temperature.
Recipe Tips
1. Don't microwave cacao butter chunks to melt, it will only burn. They must be melted in a water bath.
2. Avoid using wooden or other porous equipment which can retain moisture, and keep all bowls and tools dry. A single drop of water will cause the chocolate to seize or crumble.
3. Replace 1 tablespoon of the cocoa powder with cacao paste if you have it for a more buttery texture to the chocolate.
4. Using a polycarbonate mold will add a natural shine to your chocolate, a shine that a silicon mold will not.
5. Optional toppings: Top your bars with a few spoonfuls of nuts, seeds, popped quinoa, puffed rice, store bought or homemade chocolate chips and dried fruit.
FAQS
Melted chocolate can seize, or crumble, when hit with water or even cold ingredients. To fix this, add a teaspoon of coconut oil and keep heating, even try heating in the microwave for 30 seconds.
The percentage is the amount of cocoa butter in the bar. For instance, a 60% cacao bar holds 60% cacao and the rest is sugar and byproducts.
Dark chocolate has a higher cacao content, typically above 60%.
Studies show that dark chocolate can boost the brain, mood, memory and lower anxiety.
Specifically this happens when there is a high percentage of cacao from cacao beans in the chocolate. Cacao beans are high in soluble fiber, vitamins and minerals including magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and zinc. [source]
More Homemade Chocolates
- How to Make Chocolate Bark
- Homemade Chocolate Chips
- Make Holiday Chocolates in Molds
- 2-ingredient Chocolate Fudge
- Homemade Chocolates in a Box
- Chocolate Easter Eggs
If you tried this recipe or any other recipe on my website, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the 📝 comments below. Thanks for visiting!
📖 Recipe
How to Make Chocolate with Cocoa Powder (3 ingredients)
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¼ cup cocoa powder (25g) unsweetened, not dutch processed
- ¼ cup cacao butter (40g)
- 1 ½ tablespoon pure maple syrup (30g)
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 pinch salt
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Instructions
- Gather ingredients. Be sure everything is room temperature.¼ cup cacao butter (40g), ¼ cup cocoa powder (25g), 1 ½ tablespoon pure maple syrup (30g)
- Put the cacao butter in a heat-safe pyrex measuring cup and put that in a pot of simmering water (this is a double boiler). Chop the cacao butter if it is in large chunks.¼ cup cacao butter (40g)
- Stir the cacao butter until melted, about 2 minutes.
- Add in cocoa powder, maple syrup, vanilla and salt, and stir until you achieve a smooth texture.¼ cup cocoa powder (25g), 1 ½ tablespoon pure maple syrup (30g)
- Taste-test and add more maple syrup if you need it sweeter.½ teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 pinch salt
- Pour the liquid chocolate mixture into dry chocolate bar molds.
- Add toppings if using to the mold before pouring or on the top of the freshly poured chocolate in the mold.
- Allow the poured chocolate to reach room temperature before chilling, about 15 minutes.
- Then set the mold uncovered in the refrigerator for 1 hour or in the freezer for 30 minutes.
- Remove your homemade chocolate bar (s) from the mold, cover in gold foil or candy foil papers.
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