Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love chocolates, but besides being more health-conscious these days, I have food intolerances that keep me from buying the cute little boxes at the stores. 

So, this year I decided to make my own. 

The first batch I did were pretty simple; I made a mix of cocao butter, coconut oil, anise extract and honey, and spooned them into a heart shaped silicon mold. I let that harden for about an hour and placed a toasted almond on top and then spooned some melted dark chocolate over them to finish. I let them cool in the fridge overnight before popping them out of the molds. I had a little trouble with the honey separating out of this one, not sure if it's an issue with the cocao butter, .... anyone work with cocao butter?

Cute, huh?!?

The second batch I made was a variation from a recipe from the Chestnut School that I may have posted before; Naughty Lavender Truffles, the recipe is towards the bottom of the page.

I love, love, love these!

I substituted coconut milk for the cream and coconut oil for the butter. 

Here's the batch going into the fridge to chill:

and here are the finished truffles!

These came out great!

Really, it wasn't very hard to make my own chocolates, and I can put what I want in, or more importantly skip the ingredients in commercial chocolates that are unhealthy.

Hope your evening is filled with fun and love or at least chocolate!

Chocolate Roses

I recently read a post on Plant Journeys about making skin oil with coconut oil and roses; and the most interesting part of the post to me was using the strained rose leaves to make chocolate treats! You can read her process and recipe by following the link.

So I had to make it for myself. I don't have an actual recipe to share, as this was one of those moments that I was "in the zone" and not measuring, but I can describe my process. 

I put the strained, chopped rose petals and some chocolate in the top of a double boiler. ( I chopped the rose petals before steeping them in the coconut oil, and my double boiler is just two small pots, one on top of the other, with the simmering water on the bottom.) I added a splash more coconut oil. As the chocolate melted I added some chopped pecans, a few spoonfuls of pomegranate juice, and a pinch of cardamon. Once it was all mushy, I spread it out in a pan lined with waxed paper. Then I put the pan in the fridge so the mixture would harden, at which point I broke it into pieces and stored it in a sealed container back in the fridge. I'm down to the last two pieces, so I'm going to have to make some more!

Addendum: I found my original bit of paper where I wrote down quantities; so it was 1/2 cup chocolate to 2 cups strained rose mast (soaked in coconut oil), another 1/8 cup coconut oil, 1 tsp. of the juice. 

One of my goals for 2013 is to become more organized and keep all my recipes and formulations in one spot.

I discovered an interesting thing about  pomegranates. They will keep in the fridge a long time for use in summer recipes..... although it's a bit hit or miss which ones will keep and which ones will rot.