Chocolate obsession

I blame my mother. She introduced me to it, encourages me to eat it, and supplies me with it. Boy I love her for it. Chocolate - I know most women do enjoy it, but I'd say I am downright addicted to it. Sometimes I will tell myself NO MORE because I'll get to this point where I can eat a Hershey bar with a cup of hot cocoa with a piece of chocolate cake on the side. After some time away, however, I always comes back to it.

So of course, on this quest, I had to check the ingredients. Nothing is more pure than  bar of chocolate right? Sigh, wrong. Turns out there is soy lecithin, PGPR, and artificial flavor in it. I didn't know what PGPR was, so I used handy dandy google. Polyglycerol polyricinoleate. Yes, I copied and pasted that instead of trying to copy it out. It is a manufactured emulsified fat that replaces some of the cocoa butter in chocolate - because cocoa butter is more expensive. Well I don't like that, not one bit. You also know how I feel about artificial flavor. What does that even mean?

I face an even bigger problem now. My son. The boy LOVES him some chocolate. I know it is my fault, but I knew we couldn't avoid giving it to him forever. I want him to have the best of the best, and still be able to enjoy the best things in life, so for our house, I am going to try a few different recipes of homemade chocolate. 

This one came off pinterest, from this site. So it is one of those fashionable paleo recipes, because I am oh-so trendy. It uses coconut oil as the fat, which is something I've bee trying to get more of in my diet anyway. 

These are my ingredients:

I'm too poor to buy "the best" cocoa powder, but I seriously can never tell a difference like most foodies claim to. 

The directions say to melt the coconut oil and then blend everything in the blender, but you see, I had this going on:

So I didn't want to be running my extra loud blender. So I just put everything in the pot on the stove. This worked perfectly - and no need to dirty the blender!

It all came together pretty quickly over medium heat. Then I just poured it into 12 muffin cups and stuck it in the fridge!

Well, don't mind if I do. 

I was worried they wouldn't come out of the paper lining that well, but they came out perfectly! Also, they are delicious. A very fudge-y consistency and very rich. It melts fast in warm hands, but don't eat to too fast - savor it. Then lick your fingers. 

They also past inspection with my boss. Approved!

Next I think I'll try and order my own cocoa butter and use that. I just happened to have all these things at my house already, so that is another plus. Oh, I also didn't add vanilla to the recipe because that is something I didn't have, but they are still really good. I'm guessing a little vanilla would make them even better. I also put a little sprinkling of salt over a few of them just for me. In my opinion, salt compliments chocolate really nicely. Well, in my opinion, salt kind of compliments everything nicely...

Enjoy!

Chocolate peanut butter fudge

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup high quality cocoa powder
1/2 cup smooth almond butter
1/4 cup raw honey or maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Melt all ingredients except vanilla in a pot over medium heat. Once combined and melted, remove from heat and add vanilla.  Pour into paper-lined muffin tin cups or silicon muffin cups and fill half-inch full.  Makes 10 -12.   Chill for 30 minutes or freeze for 10 minutes.  When firm, remove.  Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator.  Mmm-mm!