Learn how easy it is to make homemade chocolate with only 3 essential ingredients needed: cocoa butter, cocoa powder and a sweetener of your choice. You can easily make this chocolate vegan, low carb and paleo friendly by choosing the right sweetener for you!
What is cocoa butter?
Cocoa butter is the edible fat extracted from, you guess it: cacao beans. It’s got a naturally chocolatey smell and taste making it a perfect addition to homemade chocolate. Despite the name, cocoa butter is naturally dairy free/vegan so don’t worry about the ‘butter’ in the name.
It’s typically sold in solid, block-like form that you’ll need to chop up to melt. I recommend using a kitchen scale to measure out what you need otherwise it might be too tedious to melt and then measure.
Cocoa butter can be hard to find and very expensive which is why I don’t often use it in recipes. Since I got so many questions about how to make homemade dark chocolate in my other chocolate recipe I thought I’d take the time to dedicate a separate recipe here explaining exactly how to use it.
So let’s get to it!
Cocoa Vs Cacao
Cocoa and cacao are so similar in name, look and product that they can so easily be mixed up. That being said there are a few key differences to know that will help keep it all straight:
| CACAO | COCOA |
| cacao refers to the name of the plant/seeds and the minimally processed products that are derived from it | cocoa refers to all of the products that come from cacao plants that have been processed in high temps |
| cold pressed & heated in low temperatures – raw | roasted & cooked in higher temperatures – not raw |
| less processed – more bitter | more processed – more sweet |
| high antioxidants & nutritional value | less antioxidants & nutritional value |
What should I use here?
Whatever you have! Cacao powder/butter, cocoa butter/powder, unprocessed cocoa powder, dutch processed cocoa powder, etc.
The type of cocoa/cacao that you use in this recipe really only depends on you and your preference. Use cacao products if you’d like to make raw chocolate with a few extra health benefits. Use cocoa/dutch processed chocolate if you like your chocolate a little sweeter. They’ll all work here so don’t sweat it.
What type of sweetener can I use to make homemade chocolate?
It’s up to you! You can use more natural sweeteners like maple or honey, low carb/keto sweeteners like stevia or erythritol or even plain white caster sugar or powdered icing sugar if you prefer.
If you choose to use a coarser grain sugar like caster sugar, you will need to mix and warm the mixture longer to ensure the grains fully dissolve.
Updated Note on Sweeteners:
A couple things that you’ll need to keep in mind:
- You’ll need more or less sweeteners depending on the type you use.
- Honey and maple are sweeter to taste than plain white sugar and erythritol so you need less honey/maple than you would the sugar/erythritol.
- Liquid stevia is naturally very sweet – you’ll need to measure it out in drops and not cups.
- Start out with a small amount of sweetener and taste and as as you go. You can always add more sweetener but you can’t take it away.
- Make sure you fully dissolve whatever sweetener you use – especially if you’re using a granulated sweetener.
What percentage dark chocolate is this?
This is going to depend on how much and what kind of sweetener you use to make your chocolate.
Chocolate percentage refers to how much cocoa/cacao products are in your chocolate. As a really base explanation, it’s a measure of how much sugar is in a bar of chocolate.
This recipe is made up of essentially three ingredients:
- 1 cup | 220 g cocoa butter
- 1 cup | 118 g cocoa powder
- 1/4 cup | 79 g maple syrup (for this example I’m just going to use 1/4 cup maple, but this amount/type of sweetener can be changed to suit you)
The Math
If you add up all of those amounts together you’ll end up with a chocolate that weighs 417 grams. The cocoa butter and cocoa powder together in this recipe weigh 338g. In order to calculate the percentage you need to divide 338g by 417g and you’ll end up with .8105 g . Once you move the decimal point over two places as you should when calculating percentages you’ll end up with 81.05%. SO if you’re only using 1/4 cup maple syrup you’d end up with an 81% chocolate.
However, you need to keep in mind that different sweeteners weigh different amounts. 1/4 cup maple syrup weighs 79 grams but 1/4 cup honey weighs 85 grams and 1/4 cup white caster sugar weighs 50 grams. If you use something like stevia you’ll end up using much less which will also change the chocolate percentage. That’s just one reason why a 70% chocolate bar can taste so different depending on the brand.
To sum it all up the Math
It really just depends. If you use 1/4 – 1/2 cup maple or honey your chocolate will be some where between 65%-80%. If you use more or less sweetener, you can calculate the percentage yourself by adding up the weight and then dividing the weight of the cocoa products (338g) by the weight of the sweetener.
Hope you enjoy!
Homemade Chocolate with Cocoa Butter
Learn how easy it is to make homemade chocolate with only 3 essential ingredients needed: cocoa butter, cocoa powder and a sweetener of your choice. You can easily make this chocolate vegan, low carb and paleo friendly by choosing the right sweetener for you!
Ingredients
- 1 cup | 220 g cocoa butter
- 1 cup | 118 g unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/4 - 1/2 cup | 80g - 160g maple syrup, honey, agave etc*
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Chop up and melt the cocoa butter. You can melt directly in a small sauce pan over a low heat or in the microwave. Once melted remove the cocoa butter from the heat. To make raw chocolate, melt the cocoa butter slowly over a water bath (see notes).
- When the cocoa butter has fully melted, stir in the cocoa powder, sweetener, sea salt and any additional flavours you want to add.
- Whisk everything completely until there are no remaining lumps of cocoa powder and the honey has dissolved into the chocolate mixture.
- Pour the chocolate into silicone moulds or a lined muffin cups and transfer to the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Once the chocolate has fully hardened, pop it out of the moulds and enjoy.
- Keep stored at room temperature or in the fridge.
Notes
- I no longer recommend adding vanilla extract (or other flavored extracts) to this chocolate as most extracts contain a small amount of water which can cause the chocolate to seize. If you would like to add flavors I recommend you use a food grade oil (like mint, orange, cherry, coffee, etc) instead.
- Optional: Melt over a water bath. Place the cocoa butter in a medium sized heat safe bowl. Place the bowl over a small pot of simmer water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water. Let sit and stir occasionally until fully melted.
- How much & what kind of sweetener to use: This recipe is meant to be a 'healthy/healthier' chocolate that uses natural or unrefined sweeteners. For this reason I recommend honey or maple syrup however you can try out different type of sweetener here like. Remember that all sweeteners are different - some sweeter than others. Play around with the amounts you use based on your preference. Honey produces the most consitent results due to its low water content. If you're not concerned about using natural sweeteners, then I recommend you use 3/4cup -1 cup icing/powdered sugar.
- If using a crystal based sweetener (rather than a liquid sweetener): Melt the cocoa butter on a very low heat and then add the sugar/sweetener. Keep on a low heat and stir constantly until the sugar dissolves. Then add the remaining ingredients.
- If it's important to you, keep in mind that honey is not vegan.
- This chocolate will melt if heated so it's not suited to use in baking.
Vasanth says
I did make the chocolate. It came out nice. But once you take out of the fridge it melts. How do you prevent melting .
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Vasanth! What’s your kitchen temperature like? Cocoa butter naturally melts around 93-101°F (34-38°C). If you live in a warm place or your kitchen runs hot while you cook other things, that could be the reason it starts to melt out of the fridge.
Rachit says
Castor sugar doesn’t dissolves completely in cocoa butter. Can we use simple syrup or some form of liquid sugar instead of honey/maple?
Sarah Nevins says
Simple syrups contain a lot of water which will almost certainly cause the chocolate to seize up as solidifies. Even honey and maple can run that risk depending on the type and quality. Would icing/powdered sugar be alright for you to use? It’s a much safer bet as it doesn’t contain any water at all and the fine texture will dissolve easily in the chocolate mixture.
Dee says
Hi how can you say one cup of butter to one cup of powder when your weights say 220g & 118g ?
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Dee! Simply put, this is because different ingredients weigh different amounts.
Measuring cups measures volume (amount of space an object takes up).
A kitchen scales measures the weight of an object.
For example:
1 cup of almond butter weighs 250 grams
1 cup of almond flour weighs 96 grams
Even though they are technically made from the same thing, you can fit more almonds inside of a measuring cup when your grind it up into a nut butter.
Almond flour, though still ground up into a smaller ingredient, is much less dense than almond butter. You can’t fit as many almonds inside a measuring cup when it’s in a flour form compared to its nut butter form.
Hope this helps!
wayne says
I was weighing out the ingredients and 230 grams of cacao butter was almost 2 cups. I did remember to tare the scale since I was weighing it in a bowl. This seems like alot of cacao butter.
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Wayne! Was the cocoa butter solid, or melted when you weighed it?
I’ve just double checked other sources online and all the top sources (I didn’t look past the first google page results) for cocoa butter agree that 1 cup weighs somewhere from 200 grams at the lowest and 230 at the highest. Most sources do say it comes out to about 218 grams though so I’ve updated my weight to reflect the majority.
If you were measuring it solid/somewhat solid I think this may be why it came out to about 2 cups. In its solid form, when measured with cups the cocoa butter won’t fully fill up the cup which would make it look like it’s more than it actually is. Does that make sense?
It’sMeAgain says
I made today with caster sugar & the sugar did not melt. Is this usual? I left it sit on the double boiler, stirring often, for approx 20 mins with no luck.
The chocolate is a bit grainy but is sooo good. I’m going to try again w/ ginger or nips or…. Endless ideas.
Sarah Nevins says
Hi there!
I recommend you melt the caster sugar alongside the cocoa butter over the stove top as it will need more heat and time for the sugar crystals to fully dissolve. As for the grainy texture, that usually happens when there’s too much water/moisture in the chocolate. If any of your equipment (pots, whisks, spoons, moulds, etc) have even a drop of water it can be enough to ‘break’ the chocolate and make it grainy. If the chocolate mixture was leftover the double broiler for too long in an attempt to melt the sugar, I wonder if maybe it got exposed to too much steam. Ideally, you can avoid this issue the next time you make this if you dissolve the sugar with the cocoa butter before adding the remaining ingredients.
Hope that helps!
Lisa says
What brand of cocoa butter do you use?
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Lisa! I normally get Nutiva brand, but it sometimes varies depending on what I can get delivered from Amazon.
Hannah says
How many chocolate bars does this usually make with the molds you use?
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Hannah! I can usually fill up about 4 full molds fully with 1 thin bar. I can’t seem to find how much the molds say they hold, but they’re 8.8 inches long and 4.2 inchese wide and about 1/2 an inch deep if that helps.
WSF says
This helps answer my question I previously posted, just had to dig a little deeper! Feel free to ignore it!
Sarah Nevins says
No worries! Hope you enjoy(ed) it!
Jen says
Hi Sarah I’d love to make this recipe but I was wondering how many grams/ml per serve in a mug?
Would it be the equivalent of say one ice cube block or less?
I’m thinking to set them into a size that’s good for one convenient serve.
Thanks!
Jen
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Jen! I think that would mostly just depend on the size of your mugs. I think you’re probably right though that it’s close to the size of an ice cube block.
Another thing you could try in order to portion them out – I sometimes let the chocolate set in a medium/large Tupperware or storage container. Once it’s fully solid I’ll slice the chocolate into smaller sizes then store and enjoy from there.
Maria says
Hi if I were to use this to make filled chocolates would I have to set then temper?
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Maria!
To be honest I’m not very informed on the ins and outs of tempering chocolate as it’s not something I’ve done in a long time. I tried looking up how to temper homemade chocolate and most results I found involved starting with hardened chocolate which would make me think that the chocolate needs to be set first.
However, when it comes to tempering chocolate, it’s the cocoa butter that is being manipulated (at least to my understanding). That makes me think that you *might* be able to mix and temper this chocolate in one go. Does that make sense?
Again though – I am no expert on tempering chocolate and I could be talking total rubbish right now! You’ve given me something to experiment with though – hopefully I can come back soon and update this post with more info!
Tired says
I made mine with the usual butter since cocoa butter is hard to come across. Mine turned out melty, it didn’t block at all. I ended up using it as a dip for pancakes and spread for bread.😞
Sarah Nevins says
Hi there! Sorry to hear it didn’t come out as you would have liked!
Butter isn’t a great substitute for cocoa butter for a few reasons. One of the main reasons is that it won’t solidify as easily at room temperature. If you wanted to try these again, coconut oil is a good option and much easier/cheaper than cocoa butter.
Lisa S says
Could you use this to dip fruit in it? So just reheat it and use again? Thanks for the simple recipe and looks like everyone loves it!
Sarah Nevins says
Hi Lisa! That could work, but depending on how you want to enjoy your chocolate-dipped fruit there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
Before the chocolate sets, it’s fairly runny which means the chocolate will drip off fairly easily before it is set. You may need to build up the layers of chocolate by re-dipping the fruit every 5 minutes or so until you get a decent coverage. Alternatively, you could line some muffin cups, add the fruit and then pour the chocolate over to make little chocolate fruit cups.
If you’re wanting to enjoy the chocolate and fruit right away, you probably need to decrease the amount of cocoa butter needed to make a thicker chocolate. I haven’t tried this myself so I can’t say for sure, but if I were to try making this more suitable for dipping I would use 1/2 cup cocoa butter to start with. If the chocolate mixture looks too thick and dry, add a little more 1 tablespoon at a time until you get a thick, but smooth ganache-like chocolate. (Coconut cream will also work just as well, if not better in this scenario).
Also (this might be a bit redundant) but I think my dairy free hot fudge recipe would be the most ideal for dipping fruit. I say it could be redundant because that recipe needs 2 ounces dark chocolate. You could use this recipe to use for that one, but then you’re increasing the amount of working needed altogether which might not be the most ideal. Just in case you’re interested, you can find that recipe here: https://www.asaucykitchen.com/dairy-free-hot-fudge/#mv-create-recipe
I hope that helps! If you have any more questions though, just let me know and I’ll try my best to help you sort it 🙂