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. 
How to make chocolate in just 10 minutes. It's easy, it's inexpensive, and a beautiful quick way to create custom vegan 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.
The process of making chocolate bars commercially is complex, involving processing cocoa beans, adding preservatives, and tempering. Making chocolate from cocoa powder at home is positively simple in comparison, and relatively inexpensive. A single bar using this homemade chocolate recipe breaks down to the cost of a dollar. Compare that to the price of the last quality chocolate bar you bought!
Keep your healthy chocolate bars as your own treat, or wrap them in gold paper and give them as gifts as you would my 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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Why You'll Love This
Control the ingredients. Making your own chocolate gives you a lovely healthy snack with the ingredients you choose. Leave out the wax, or chemicals or artificial ingredients commercial bars contain. And add in the amount of salt or sugar you prefer. Prefer refined-sugar-free chocolate? Use maple syrup, dates or date paste to sweeten.
Easier to make than buy. It's so easy to melt the cocoa powder and cacao butter in a heat-safe pyrex measuring cup in a pot of water on the stove. Then stir in the sweetener, pour into mold and wait. Chocolate, done.
Make it healthy & protein-rich. Aside from you controlling the nasty ingredients you leave out, you can also add in good ones, such as popped quinoa for a crunch, dried berries, hemp or flax seed. Make your own chocolate bar the healthiest candy bar ever.
Ingredients
1. Cocoa Powder: Remember to choose the highest quality cocoa powder you can to achieve the deepest chocolate flavor. I recommend using the Ghirardelli and Valhrona brands.
2. Cacao butter: Cacao butter is probably the most important ingredient of chocolate. You might not have it your pantry. I use this brand all the time. Be sure to use food grade cacao butter, not the type used for making soap. You can also buy cacao butter in grocery stores such as Whole Foods or online. Cacao butter is a soft yellow, smells incredible, and comes in bags of chunks or discs. You can leave off cacao butter and use coconut oil in its place but you won't have the creamy texture inherent in quality European chocolate bars.
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. Coconut oil: Very little is needed to add a shine and silkiness to your chocolate. Use refined coconut oil for less coconut flavor, but also less nutrition. Coconut oil in general is full of healthy fats that support weight-loss, skin and cardiac function and is even antiviral.
5. Optional: Vanilla, salt for flavor enhancement, 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. I used this multi-bar polycarbonate mold so I tripled my this recipe or to make one bar, use this 1-bar silicon mold.
Step 1: Put the cacao butter in a heat-safe pyrex measuring cup sitting in a pot of simmering water, and stir until it melts, about 2-3 minutes. Don't use the microwave.
Step 2: Add in the cocoa powder, maple syrup, and coconut oil and stir again.
Step 3: If you want to deepen the chocolate flavor, add ¼ teaspoon of vanilla and a pinch of salt too to enhance the overall flavor.
Step 4: Pour into clean dry mold. Add toppings now.
Step 5: Allow the chocolate mixture in the mold to cool to room temperature. Only then, cover lightly with foil, and set in the freezer for up to 30 minutes so it will harden well enough for you to remove it from the mold.
Step 6: When they are ready, remove your homemade chocolate bars from their mold.
Storage of Chocolate
Once solid, wrap your bar foil or candy foil papers, and store in sealed container in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. Store long-term in the freezer for two months.
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.
Recipe Tips
1. Don't microwave cacao butter chunks to melt, it will only burn. It must be melted in a water bath.
2. Keep all bowls, molds, other tools and even add-ins completely dry. A single drop of water will cause the chocolate to seize or crumble. If this happens, add 1 teaspoon of coconut oil and keep stirring it in a pyrex cup in boiling water until all melts again.
4. Use a polycarbonate mold for shine, although a silicon mold is fine too.
5. If you want to use dates instead of maple syrup, I suggest using date syrup which you can buy where maple syrup is sold, or make date paste. Here is my date paste recipe.
6. 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
Can you make chocolate with cocoa powder?
It's easy to make homemade chocolate bars with unsweetened cocoa powder, cacao butter and maple syrup. You just melt them together in a double boiler, pour into a mold and customize with sprinkles.
What do you need to make your own chocolate?
To make your own chocolate you'll need a mold, and unsweetened cocoa powder, cacao butter, and maple syrup. A small amount of coconut oil is optional and lends a shine.
Does Chocolate Lower Anxiety?
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 (3 ingredients)
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¼ cup cocoa powder (25g)
- ¼ cup cacao butter (40g)
- 1 ½ tablespoon pure maple syrup, room temperate
- 1 teaspoon coconut oil
Optional
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 pinch salt
Instructions
Make Chocolate Bars
- Gather ingredients. Be sure everything is room temperature.¼ cup cacao butter (40g), 1 teaspoon coconut oil, ¼ cup cocoa powder (25g), 1 ½ tablespoon pure maple syrup, room temperate
- Put the cacao butter in a heat-safe pyrex measuring cup and put that in a pot of simmering water. Be careful to not splash a single drop of water into the cup or the chocolate will seize.¼ cup cacao butter (40g)
- Stir the cacao butter until melted, about 3 minutes.
- Add in cocoa powder, maple syrup and coconut oil, and stir until combined into a smooth texture. You can add vanilla and salt at this point.¼ cup cocoa powder (25g), 1 teaspoon coconut oil, 1 ½ tablespoon pure maple syrup, room temperate
- Taste-test and add more maple syrup if you need it sweeter. Consider adding a pinch of salt and ¼ teaspoon of vanilla to boost the flavor.½ teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 pinch salt
Pour into mold
- Pour the liquid chocolate mixture into chocolate bar molds.
- You can add toppings now on the top of the freshly poured chocolate bar after you've poured the mixture into the mold.
- Allow the chocolate mixture in the mold to cool to room temperature. Only then, cover lightly with foil, and set in the freezer for up to 30 minutes so it will harden well enough for you to remove it from the mold.
- Cover the mold tightly with foil, and set it in the freezer to set for up to 30 minutes.
- Remove your homemade chocolate bar (s) from the mold, cover in gold foil or candy foil papers.
Storage
- The bars stay fresh in a sealed container for two weeks in the refrigerator and 4 months in the freezer. In both instances, be sure there is no moisture in the container.
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