3 Ingredients: Galaxy Dark Chocolate with Raspberries

Homemade dark chocolate made easy with three ingredients - cacao butter, cacao powder and honey/maple syrup. A delicious and healthy sweet treat - especially with a sprinkling of freeze-dried raspberries. 

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This is a recipe that I’ve played over and over in my head for months on end, even up till last year (not three months shy - ‘last year’, but June 2015, last year). I’ve written it, envisioned it and even bought a pan fit for molding large chunks of dark chocolate. But then my flimsy ‘notepad’, which is more like a sticky pad, escaped from sight, and now lives in a mysterious pile of other lost recipes, a recipe wasteland of sorts, somewhere in my house.

But then, this winter, something happened and everything fell into place, or more appropriately, I actively sought out what I needed to finally present to you this recipe for Homemade Dark Chocolate Bars with Raspberries. I bought a proper recipe notebook and I finally crossed paths with the most difficult of ingredients to find, yet the most important to a chocolate bar, the key that holds it all together - cacao butter.  

Cacao butter makes chocolate. Pale white blocks melt away into a golden bath that is the backbone of any chocolate mixture. Its taste is minimal but its smell is heavenly – with a cozy, warming sensation - a nostalgic longing for just a good piece of chocolate. The butter offers a chocolaty note while the cacao powder layers in richness. Let the honey sweeten the batter and within a few minutes you’ve got yourself homemade chocolate bars. Easy ones at that.

Write the recipe down on scrap paper, on the back of a Hershey’s wrapper or type it in your computer, but it won’t matter because this is the easiest of recipes. And I’m betting that you can handle just three ingredients in exchange for a huge bar of delicious dark chocolate. And go wild with the toppings – puffed quinoa and freeze-dried raspberries elevates this chocolate to one of beauty as well as taste.

Enjoy…

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Serves: 15 small bars

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cool Time: 1 hour

Ingredients for the Homemade Dark Chocolate Bars:

- 1 cup cacao butter

- 1 & 1/4 cup cacao powder

- 3/4 cup honey or maple syrup

- 1 cup puffed quinoa

-1/2 cup freeze dried raspberries

- pinch of sea salt

Instructions:

Fill a small saucepan with 1/3 cup of water and place a bowl on top, covering the saucepan. Once the bowl is hot and the water below is boiling melt the cacao butter inside the bowl. Once it has melted stir in the maple syrup and cacao powder for a few minutes until the chocolate thickens. Then mix in most of the puffed quinoa and raspberries – saving a few to sprinkle on top. Pour into a lined baking sheet and leave it to set in the freezer for an hour or so and enjoy! These will not melt so store them in the refrigerator or in the pantry, as you’d like.

5-Homemade-Dark-Chocolate-Bars-with-Raspberries | www.8thandlake.com

Enjoy this recipe you guys! I'm planning on packing up a few pieces and bringing them to a couple of special friends this week...if they last that long ;)

And thank you for sharing your creations on instagram! Its been so fun seeing your take on a few classics from the blog :) You can find me at #8thandlake.

Lots of love from the West Coast,

xx Marie