Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Ways to make 99% cacao dark chocolate taste less like diesel fuel

Since sugar free dark chocolate is one of the foods allowed on Paleo, of course that's one of the first things I bought.  I knew going into this that there were certain things I just would not compromise on, and chocolate was one of them.  But let me just warn you: 99% cacao is no joke.  It has no sweetness whatsoever.  Seriously, I'm surprised that it isn't made with diesel fuel, because that's what it tastes like.  I felt tough as nails for eating it, but it needed a little somethin' somethin'! (as we say in the south)

Here are some of ingredients you can use to make it taste better and still be paleo-approved.  Raw honey, almonds, fruit, and coconut milk!  And yes, I took a picture, because pictures make me hungry:

Ingredients that go well with dark chocolate

Here's some ideas for what to do:

- Melt it and mix it with pieces of very sweet, ripe fruit that have been simmered in a pan (the heat extracts the sweetness).  Then, let it cool enough to where you can form it into balls, and reharden it in the freezer

- Melt it and combine it with a little raw honey and nuts (by "little" I don't mean half the jar of honey, remember it doesn't do you any good to go without table sugar if you're pigging out on honey)

- Melt it and combine it with coconut milk and a touch of raw honey  (if you add enough coconut milk, you will eventually get a syrup-like consistency.  This is what you want if you want to be able to pour the chocolate into molds)

In this picture, I had melted half a dark chocolate bar with about 1/4 of a cup of coconut milk and 1 tablespoon of raw honey.  When I poured it on the sheet I added the fruit, nuts, and shredded coconut.

A Paleo chocolate bar

Anyway, I'm sure there's more discoveries to be made in the realm of Paleo candy making, but that's about the extent of my expertise (I specialize in eating candy only).  I still have to experiment some with mint and peppermint extract, because I bet that would be good too.  But you get the idea. 5 grams of natural sugar added to 1/2 a chocolate bar can go a long way for taste, that's for sure.

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