The easiest healthy filled chocolates recipe uses only four ingredients to create a delicious chocolate candy with a healthy fudgy filling. Perfect for Easter, Mother’s Day, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and even as a delicious candy birthday gift.
Healthy Filled Chocolates Recipe
Make your own filled chocolates at home with this easy four ingredient recipe. And make them healthy! Full of heart healthy fats, and fiber and metabolism-boosting energy. If you are going to stuff your face with chocolate, it might as well be healthy.
The filling in this particular chocolate filled recipe is my favorite and I actually also use it as a layer in this vegan gluten-free brownies. The chocolate filling has an unusual texture, light but fudgy, and a melt-in-your-mouth consistency. Once you eat one, you’ll find the experience haunting and want another one right away, haha. The good thing is, that’s okay, because they are high in fiber and MCTs, both of which benefit the heart, weight loss and digestion.
So how do we make these magical filled chocolates? I use a mold but you don’t have to – you can also just use mini cupcake liners if that is what you have on hand.
I love making filled chocolates in mini cupcake liners. In fact, if you have my book “Crazy Healthy With 4 Ingredients”, you’ll find several chocolate treats that are made in cupcake liners, including “Lentil Chocolate Fudge Cups” on page 19 and “Chocolate Orange Turmeric Cups” on page 33.
Only 4 Ingredients in These Filled Chocolates
This chocolate filled candy recipe is just as easy as those in my book. I guess I love 4-ingredient recipes, haha. And this one is no different.
Here the filling is made of coconut, cacao powder and maple syrup. You can use cocoa powder if you don’t have cacao powder but try to use a quality unsweetened cocoa such as Hershey’s here.
How Healthy Are These Filled Chocolates?
The four ingredients include dark chocolate for the shell. I just buy quality chips or a bar and melt it. My favorite brands are Enjoylife, Chocolate Love, Ghiradelli, Hu, Theo and more. I melt the chocolate in a pyrex measuring cup in the microwave in 60-second intervals. If you want to make it super liquidy, add a touch of oil, either olive oil, coconut oil or avocado, about 1 tbsp per cup of chocolate.
I just use a spoon to paint the sides of the mold well or cupcake paper.
The filling is made of three ingredients, shredded coconut, cacao powder and maple syrup. And here is a breakdown of the nutritional contribution of these three ingredients:
1. The shredded coconut provides a ton of fiber and MCT’s that benefit the heart, and digestion, and help you feel full so you don’t eat unhealthy snacks. Does it make the fudge filling taste like coconut? No, it is blended into butter and sheds it’s coconut flavor.
2. The maple syrup is sugar, but still holds some essential minerals and is not refined sugar. Even so, I do try to add the minimal possible to offset the bitterness of the sweetened cacao powder.
3. Which brings us to that third ingredient in the filling, cacao powder. You can, of course, use unsweetened cocoa powder if you want. And during this pandemic, I thought I’d address the differences since going off to shop isn’t that easy anymore and you might have to just use the cocoa in your cabinet. And that’s ok, but here is the difference in case you are interested.
Difference Between Cacao Powder and Cocoa Powder
Both powders come from a chocolate bean, but cacao powder is less processed and thus keeps more nutrition.
For instance, cacao powder retains more protein, calcium, magnesium and potassium. In fact, 1 tbsp has 1.6 gm protein, 1mg iron, 14mg calcium, 42 mg magnesium, 120 mg potassium. By comparison, cocoa powder has no protein or magnesium, half the calcium and potassium.
However, cocoa powder has twice the iron that cacao powder does, perhaps via supplementation. And it tastes slightly less bitter than does cacao powder so you might need less sweetener in any recipe which is a nutritional plus.
Cacao powder really wins though, with more nutrition and a stronger immune-booster than cocoa powder, with nearly double the anti-oxidants or ORAC score. And the higher magnesium is awesome at boosting mood and is often in short supply in people who are stressed.
But buying cacao powder isn’t as easy as grabbing a can of unsweetened cocoa. You’d have to go to a healthy food store such as Whole Foods, or online.
My favorite cacao powder is here, by Navitas Organics. And a quality but less expensive brand is Anthony’s here.
If you want to buy cocoa powder, grab Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder either at your grocery store or here online. You want quality cacao or cocoa brands to avoid the possibility of heavy metal contamination.
How to Make Filled Chocolates in 5 Steps
1. First coat the mold or cupcake liners with chocolate. To do this, melt your chocolate in a microwave for 1 minute. Stir until smoothie, then spoon a tiny bit into each mold well or cupcake liner, and use the back of a spoon to draw up the chocolate on the sides and around the well. Set it in the refrigerator while you make the filling.
2. Turn the shredded coconut into coconut butter. Just blend the shredded coconut for 1-2 minutes in a high speed blender, stirring occasionally. I use a Blendtec Twister jar and it is awesomely helpful to make coconut butter. Here is a video of me making coconut butter with that jar on Instagram Stories.
3. Add the cacao and maple syrup to the coconut butter, and blend again until combined. The result is crumbly and fudgy at the same time.
4. Spoon into molds, flatten with spoon and top with remaining melted chocolate. Refrigerate until ready to pop out, at least 30 minutes.
Store these delightful candies in a sealed container at room temperature for 24 hours, in refrigerator for a week, and frozen indefinitely.
Consider These Other Chocolate Recipes
- Sugar Cookie Truffles
- Chocolate Spice Truffles
- Easy Truffles Recipe
- Protein Ball Recipes
- Crunch Bars
- Vegan Fudge
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Healthy Filled Chocolates Recipe
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup shredded coconut
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
- 1 tbsp cacao powder
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
Molds
- 1 small Easter egg mold (polycarbonate) (Polycarbonate molds make chocolate look incredibly shiny)
- 1 large Easter egg mold
Instructions
Coat the molds for Chocolate Shell
- Melt the chocolate chips and oil in the microwave for about 1 minute. Stir until melted. Microwave again at 15 second intervals if you need to.
- Pour a bit of chocolate into each mold well, and use a spoon to draw it up. Set the mold in the refrigerator while you make the filling.
Make Filling
- First make the coconut butter.Add the shredded coconut to a high speed blender and process for 2-3 minutes, stirring once or twice until your shredded coconut has turned to a liquidy paste.Pro tip – make sure the shredded coconut is finely shredded (not flakes) and fresh.
- Add the maple syrup and cacao powder, and process until you have a creamy crumbly mixture.
- In a 2-cup measuring cup, stir together the melted coconut butter, maple syrup and cacao powder until evenly distributed. If you double the recipe, put all ingredients into a food processor.
Build the chocolates
- Spoon the filling into each mold until it is level. Spoon a bit of liquid chocolate on top and refrigerate until hard, about 30 minutes.
- Tip mold over to release. Store the chocolates in the refrigerator, sealed for about a week, or in the freezer long term. Yum!
Nutrition
Dee Dine is founder of Green Smoothie Gourmet, a plant based recipe blog, and author of the recent cookbook, Crazy Healthy with 4 Ingredients . On this blog you’ll find incredibly easy recipes with hidden veggies for anyone wanting to eat healthier, regardless of diet. Dee has graduate degrees in sciences and journalism. More about Dee Dine here.
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