Homemade food usually tastes best: many people know this statement. But not everything can be easily prepared at home, like chocolate – or can it? We’ll tell you how you can make chocolate yourself and not only design it according to your individual taste, but also make it healthier.
We often buy chocolate that only contains traces of cocoa, but a lot of sugar. Milk chocolate in particular is not the best choice for a snack: it usually consists of 35 to 50 percent cocoa, the rest is mostly sugar and milk – and brings calories. Dark chocolate, i.e. dark and dark chocolate, on the other hand, consists of around 70 to 99 percent cocoa and is therefore healthier: it contains less sugar, although more cocoa fat. But due to the high cocoa content, it contains plenty of healthy secondary plant substances, the so-called flavonoids. Dark chocolate has a beneficial effect on the blood vessels and can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as strokes. This is proven by a study by the German Institute for Nutritional Research (DIfE).
If you want to make a healthier but tasty alternative to conventional chocolate from the shelves, you should ideally use a lot of cocoa and then refine this dark chocolate with ingredients such as nuts, dried berries or spices and ideally avoid industrial sugar.
To make chocolate at home, you need three ingredients for the basic recipe: cocoa powder and cocoa butter as well as sweeteners. For the latter, (full cane or coconut blossom) sugar, agave syrup or something else are suitable. Cocoa (with a high cocoa content) and cocoa butter should be mixed in equal parts. If you take around 100 grams of cocoa powder, you should mix it with 100 grams of cocoa butter and, depending on your taste, add sweetness. As a rule, two tablespoons of sugar or syrup are suitable, or less if you don’t need as much. You can change the basic recipe to suit your taste and refine it with additional ingredients. There are ideas in various recipe books.
With the basic and individual extra ingredients you can then make the chocolate yourself:
If you want to make things a little easier for yourself, you can also use ready-made sets that contain everything you need to make your own chocolate. You can usually use it to make different types of chocolate yourself (white, milk or dark chocolate) and there are already ingredients to refine and decorate them as well as instructions.
Other sets, for example, also include chocolate boxes that you can label so that you can then give the homemade chocolate as a gift. Because if you want to make chocolate yourself, you can also share it with others. A great, individual gift idea.
Tip: To preserve the chocolate for as long as possible, store it at room temperature between 16 and 18 degrees. It will last several weeks in a tin can without turning white or dull.
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