Lean and lovin it: Homemade chocolate fits into a healthy eating plan
It's been six months since I showed sugars and refined carbohydrates (even whole grain wheat) the door.
What wasn't easy at the end of last year were the many sugar-loaded goodies (especially cookies, candies and cakes) available in my office and at holiday parties. It was frequently tough to keep saying: “No, thank you.”
Over the years, I've learned that if I cut a food out of my food plan forever, all I do is crave it. I do miss chocolate, though.
Since learning, with some certainty, that fat doesn't make people fat; sugar does, I've waved goodbye to many of the low-fat desserts I've created, like Double Chocolate Chip Fudge Brownies. Yet I do miss chocolate. I don't crave it; simply miss it.
After giving it some thought, I realized that I could make a chocolate bar that would fit into my new food plan using organic cocoa powder, organic coconut oil or cocoa butter, vanilla and stevia, a natural calorie-free sugar substitute.
I headed to my lean kitchen to experiment and found that a short ingredient list does not make creation easy (think pie crust). Since it's the new darling of healthy fats, I made my first chocolate bar with coconut oil. I learned that coconut oil goes from solid to liquid at a very low temperature: 76 degrees.
I set up a double boiler in my kitchen (a small saucepan sitting in a larger saucepan one-third filled with warm water). The coconut oil melted quickly and then I stirred-in cocoa powder, stevia granules and vanilla. Since I was using coconut oil, I decided shredded, dried coconut would be a tasty addition.
After tasting my chocolate and coconut mixture for sweetness, I poured it into a 13-by-9-inch, foil-lined pan and put it in the refrigerator. After about 30 minutes it set and hardened. I cracked off a piece. Good; not great. Definitely had a chocolate and coconut taste, but I wanted the chocolate flavor to be bigger and for it to be sweeter, since it tasted less sweet cold than it did warm.
Back to the kitchen I went until I hit on a recipe that worked for me. I took a container of my chilled chocolate to a party and set it out. More than an hour went by before anyone tasted it, which is when I found out that in a warm room (78-degrees) my new candy began melting. Not good. Back to my kitchen.
I got hold of 2 pounds of cocoa butter (the fat that comes from processing cocoa beans into chocolate) that melts at about 90 degrees and made more chocolate. This worked as well as coconut oil and didn't melt in a warm room.
I also learned that it was better to use stevia in packets for accurate measuring, than spoon-measured stevia. Granulated stevia doesn't dissolve, so this chocolate is a little grainy, instead of being creamy-smooth.
Finally, I had a sugar-free, nothing-artificial chocolate candy bar that tasted good and could even be chopped-up (if you don't add shredded coconut) to make chocolate chips. Oh, what a glorious day!
Try my homemade, sugar-free, all-natural, ultralow carbohydrate chocolate bar with coconut for yourself.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@theleanwizard.com.