Vegan Milk Chocolate

After reducing my supermarket trips during Plastic Free July, I’m down to my last square of bought chocolate. Horrors! Luckily my pantry is stocked with plenty of cocoa powder, sugars, nuts and cocoa butter buttons. And I can make it exactly how I like it.

½ cup cocoa powder

¼ cup sweetener (more if desired)

¼ cup cocoa butter/coconut oil

2 T almond/soy milk

dash vanilla essence

pinch salt

up to ½ cup sultanas, nuts, chocolate, etc

Prepare greased moulds. Any shape. Sorry son, these frogs are for mumma!

Melt cocoa butter over gentle heat.

Add maple syrup, agave syrup, rice syrup, honey or fine sugar and stir well. I used muscovado sugar, but it needed more heating to melt it and make it smooth. Oops.

Stir in cocoa or cacao powder.

Add half the rice milk, stirring. Add the rest of the milk, vanilla and salt, and stir well.

Tip in chopped nuts or fruit and stir through.

Spoon into moulds. I found these moulds at the tip shop; not sure why you would want tiny bottle shapes of something, but silicone is easy to unmould so it’ll do.

Sit moulds in fridge until firm, tap out.

Store in fridge for longest life, and warm to room temperature before eating (unless struck by desperate craving). I’ve put mine into an opaque container to hide in the top of the fridge, to keep it from little eyes. Should be safe, until my next lot of couchsurfers are looking for margarine…

For dark chocolate, leave the milk out. This recipe is gluten and dairy free, and can be adapted to other dietary needs as required.

Mine turned out a bit grainy, because I didn’t melt the sugar completely. Think I’ll try honey or maple syrup next time. It’s a chunk of rich cocoa goodness, and that’s what counts. Looks like I’ll have to make another batch to keep experimenting… oh dear. 😉

Chocolate shortage averted. Until next time!