Home-made chocolate cups

The inspiration for these delicious chocolate cups came from a couple of instagram accounts that I follow. A few of them feature mainly vegan recipes and last week, many of them were posting these amazing, mouthwatering pictures of home-made vegan chocolate. As a (dark) chocolate lover, I just had to give it a try! Moreover, since I learned that Cacao is really a great Superfood with many health benefits, I was absolutely convinced – as Cacao is the main Superfood ingredient of these cups.

Ingredients:

For the chocolate:

• 1 cup cacao
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp agave nectar (or honey or stevia – or your sweetener of your choice) – this is not a fix measurement, just add as much sweetener as you like the chocolate to be sweet, I like it rather “bitter-sweet”, so I added less of sweetener

By the way, the ratio of cacao to coconut oil is always the same, just use double the amount of cacao as you do for the coconut oil

For the filling:

There is no limit to your fantasy here! You can fill the cups with anything, also peanut or almond butter sounds yummy! Or just nuts, dried fruits, etc. I decided to fill them with flavored shredded coconut.

• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 3 tbsp of berry sauce or pulp or even frozen berries, quickly heated up

Preparation

• Mix the cacao, coconut oil, vanilla extract and sweetener (coconut oil must be liquid – if it isn’t, put the jar quickly into a bowl of hot water or a few second into microwave)
• Then carefully fill muffin cups with the liquid chocolate, about 3mm high (=0.12 in)
• Put into freezer for about 10 minutes until it is hard
• In the meantime, mix shredded coconut and the berry juice
• Take out the cups from the freezer and carefully place the filling on top of it, carefully press down, so it’s tight
• Now you can either add the rest of the liquid chocolate on top right away (will give an interesting texture like on mine), or put back into freezer quickly and then add the rest of the chocolate (this will lead to a smoother surface)
• You can also top the cups with some additional cacao nibs if you have some or crushed nuts, like pistachio, looks really beautiful!
• Put back into freezer for another 10 minutes, then they are ready!

You should serve these cups immediately when you take them out of the freezer or fridge, as they are not really room temperature stable (definitely not those we have in Miami :-)). You can store them in the fridge and just take out when you feel like having something sweet. These are really clean and delicious – a must-try recipe!

Sorry for the many pictures – but I just fell in love with them! They look so cute, don’t they? 😉 Hope this was inspiring for your and you will try to make your own home-made chocolate as well!

Oh, and by the way, you can make your own nut butter cups as well, e.g. clean, healthier peanut butter cups or I used crunchy almond butter in this variation. There is really no limit to your creativity! 😉

Related articles

• Raw vegan chocolate (ceepure.wordpress.com)
• Raw Coconut and Cacao buttercups! (thefoodmedic.wordpress.com)