Sour Cherry Chocolate

Ah, chocolate. Most of us love it, some of us might even say we’re having a sort of hedonistic relationship with it. And yes, I am one of these people. So are my kids. Here is the look Ella gave me when I announced we were making chocolate;

Our favourite chocolate is something dark and raw, not loaded with milk and sugar, but bittersweet and rich. If you’ve ever come across Loving Earth chocolate you will know what I’m talking about. Since discovering this Melbourne-made choccie I’ve upped my intake of the sweet stuff tenfold. Which led me to wonder whether I could make my own. Well it turns out I can, and so can you!
 It saves on packaging, it could save you money, and it’s a really easy little treat to whip up with the kids. Plus, I would argue homemade chocolate is better for you. At the very least it’s gotta be good for the soul.

Before I launch into my recipe, I’ll let you know that it’s certainly no gospel. The coolest thing about making chocolate is that you can basically do whatever you like - add more sweetness, less sweetness, add flavourings like vanilla or peppermint, fill it with nuts, fruit, peanut butter, even chilli. So here is what we did:

Ingredients
Roughly equal weights of the following (we used 300g of each and that made ALOT of chocolate)
raw cacao butter - preferably organic and fair trade
raw cacao powder
agave syrup or another liquid sweetener of your choosing, like honey or maple syrup.
OPTIONAL:
1 vanilla bean
1 cup of dried sour cherries and goji berries

Weigh out your ingredients and use a small knife to split open the vanilla bean. Scrape out those delcious seeds and put aside.

We bought all our ingredients from Alfalfa House in Enmore

Set up a bain marie if you have one, or do what I did and makeshift one. I brought a saucepan of water to the boil, then after removing from the heat, placed a glass bowl inside so the water below could provide a gentle heat for our melting purposes.
Now you want pop the cacao butter into the bain marie and mix slowly as it melts.

Mix-Master Cullyn

Once the mixture is gooey and liquid, you can add the agave and vanilla beans and stir until combined. It's a good idea to add the agave gradually to taste...we didn't end up using the entire 300g. Then sift in the cacao powder and stir slowly until it all comes together. This is your chance to add some goodies if you’d like. Tip in the sour cherries or bits and pieces of your choice, and stir through.

Now for the fun part. If you have some little chocolate moulds or even ice cube trays, you can pour the mixture into those and set in the fridge for a couple of hours. We didn’t have any special moulds on hand so we set our chocolate in a silicone loaf tray. This act of necessity turned out to be genius because we ended up with a small loaf of amazing chocolate that could be sliced as desired. “A loaf of chocolate!?” you say...well I never said I wasn’t a chocoholic.
Because the weather has been mostly sweltering in Sydney this week, we’ve been keeping our beloved chocolate loaf in the fridge to spare it from a melted end. It's lasted us ages, but I’m sure it won’t be long before it’s all been gobbled up and we’ll need to whip up a new batch.
I'm sure Ella won't mind helping out again...

YUM!