As you'll know if you're a regular follower of this blog, we love getting creative in the kitchen here at The Madhouse, so we were really excited when CHOC Chick Raw Chocolates asked us if we'd like to try out one of their Raw Chocolate Making Kits. I have to admit, I wasn't really sure what would be in it as I'm expert at eating chocolate but not at making it !
They sent us their Starter Kit to try out. The girls (and me !) excitedly unpacked the contents of the bag and discovered the contents : a CHOC Chick Recipe Booklet, 100g Organic Raw Cacao Butter, 100g Organic Raw Cacao Powder and 100ml Sweet Freedom – a low GL natural sweetener made from fruit. Totally organic, nothing refined so these will be relatively healthy chocolates.
The instructions are perfectly designed for kids, with everything explained step-by-step and a photo of each stage so even 6-year-old Juliette, who can't read much yet, could easily follow them and see what we had to do. Right, time to get hands washed and aprons on !
It was off to an educational start as nobody - even me - had any idea what cacao butter looked, smelt or tasted like. I may have eaten it many times in chocolate or slathered it all over my skin in beauty products but I'd never seen it in its raw state. After this photo, we read the instructions properly and poured it back out of the saucepan and into a bowl so that we could melt it over hot water in a bain marie !
"Ooh it's turned into melted butter", said 9-year-old Sophie, carefully stirring the melting chunks. The next stage was pouring in some of the cacao powder and some of the Sweet Freedom sweetener. The instructions said that at this point, you could add extra ingredients, like dried fruit, nuts or vanilla essence.
I asked the girls what they'd like to add and they came up with ... multicoloured sprinkles !! At this point, you need to taste the mix to see if it's sweet enough for your tastes, and add a little extra Sweet Freedom if not. The girls found the flavour a bit too strong, as they are more used to eating milk chocolate than dark chocolate, so I actually splashed a bit of milk into the mix. I wasn't sure if this would totally wreck it and stop it setting but it didn't !
The next step was squishing it into ice cube moulds, a particularly messy job that Juliette loved ! As you can see from the chocolate streaks all over her chin, she loved licking her fingers clean too (which probably explains why we got nowhere near the suggested figure of 30 chocolates at the end !). If you look closely, you'll see that - Sod's Law ! - the one bit of chocolate that splashed on to her clothes missed the apron by millimetres and landed on her dress !
With the leftover mix, we decided to make some truffles so I spread out some cacao powder on the table and told Sophie to roll it into little balls. It wasn't totally successful because the heat of her hands made it go very gooey and sticky, but these are homemade chocolates so who wants uniform, perfectly-shaped truffles anyway ?!
Taste-wise, they aren't the best chocolates I've ever eaten - mainly because this is the taste of real, raw chocolates and we're so used to the overly processed chocolates you find on supermarket shelves - but it was a whole lot of fun and also very educational so it's definitely well worth grabbing a kit and making chocolates instead of cakes and cookies for a change.
star rating : 4/5
RRP : £11.99
for more information : http://www.chocchick.com/products/Raw-Chocolate-Starter-Kit.html
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yum, this looks like great fun! my daughter loves cooking things and i have never made chocolate either.
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