Chocolate is one of the world’s most loved foods. Not only does it really hit the taste buds’ sweet spot with a perfect blend of sweet, bitter, fat, and salt, but it has natural chemicals in it that make your brain happy.

Cacao, the main ingredient in chocolate, is considered by many nutrition gurus to be a “superfood“.

Making great chocolate candy is very easy, if you have the right ingredients. A basic recipe calls for:

1/4 cup Raw Cacao beans
1/4 cup Raw Cacao powder
1/4 cup Raw Cacao butter
1/4 cup Sweetener (Maple Syrup, Honey, Tapa Dulce, or Brown Sugar)
1 tspn Vanilla extract
Pinch of fine high quality salt such as Himalayan salt

Step 1:

Grind the Cacao BEANS in a spice/coffee grinder until powdered. To make this powder extra fine, put them in the freezer before grinding.

Step 2:

Put the Cacao BUTTER in a double-boiler, or a small pot floating on a larger pot of boiling water. This is just to LIQUEFY the Cacao Butter… don’t COOK it or you will kill much of the LIVE nutritional value such as the phytochemicals in it.

Step 3:

Mix all the ingredients in a blender, food processor, or Vitamix until your desired smoothness has been reached.

Step 4:

Add additional ingredients, and spoon into a rubber mold or makeshift mold of your own clever design. Excellent additional ingredients are:

Raw Cacao Nibs (to make it crunchy)
Nuts such as macadamias, almonds, peanuts, cashews, etc
Coffee
Orange
Chai
Peanut Butter
Crystallized Ginger
Salt Crystals (on top)
Dried cranberries
Dates or raisins
Cinnamon
Marshmallow

Put the chocolate-filled mold into the freezer for 10 minutes, and then move to the refrigerator.

Enjoy! Don’t eat too much though… this stuff is potent and can get you noticeably “high” from cacao, sugar, and caffeine!