Raw Chocolate-Making Class
Today we taught the volunteers how to make RAW chocolate.
The recipe is fairly simple. The difficulty is finding the ingredients. All are made in Costa Rica, but it’s easier to find them in the U.S. than in this country! The volunteers attacked each other with the chocolate, led mainly by Divina.
The ingredients are:
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1/2 cup cacao powder
1/4 cup cacao butter
1/4 cup raw honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch of sea salt
Additional suggested ingredients that are awesome in or on top of the chocolate:
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Cacao Nibs to make it crunchy
Nuts such as macadamia, almonds, brazil nuts, peanuts, cashews, etc
Sea Salt Crystals
Orange or Lime Zest
Crystallized Ginger
Cayenne Pepper
Cinnamon
Raisins
Chai Powder
Cherries or Banana Chunks
In our case, we made the cacao powder by rolling raw cacao beans under a spoon to loosen the dry, brittle skin, and then added some raw cacao nibs. Normally we should use a COFFEE GRINDER to make this into a fine powder, but mine was broken, so we use a food processor. It was unable to really turn it into powder, which resulted in gritty chocolates. You can also use raw cacao powder that has been pre-powderized, but it won’t taste as fresh, because of the oxidization that happens to all those powder grains. The best result comes from using your own cacao beans.
The cacao butter must be melted carefully until it’s a liquid. We do this by boiling a skillet of water and putting a small saucepan floating in this, with the cacao butter in it. This prevents it from getting too hot and burning the cacao butter.
All the ingredients in the first set above are mixed together in food processor and blended until smooth. If it’s too thick, you’ll need to add more honey or cacao butter, which will make it more liquid. You want it as a paste, not so liquid that it pours.
Use a spatula to put it into rubber candy molds, and add/decorate it with whatever ingredients your imagination can dream up (from the second list above.)
Put this in the freezer to harden them quickly.
The result will be very intense. You only need one or two small ones to get a great chocolate buzz going on, which is a combination of the caffeine, sugar, and the endorphins that your body releases due to the anandamide in the cacao. Anandamide affects the same parts of your brain as the THC in marijuana does. Many claim it’s also an aphrodisiac!
Anamaya – Raw Chocolate Candy Recipe
