Healthy Coconut Chocolate Bark Recipe

In light of Easter Sunday I want to share a nice chocolate treat that is easy to make at home and has very few ingredients - chocolate bark. But it's not just any kind, in this case we are making the chocolate ourselves which is way easier to do than you might have imagined.


Usually when you make your own chocolate candy you would need 3 main ingredients - cocoa or cacao powder, cocoa butter and a sweetener like sugar. I don't have cocoa butter so I am actually using coconut oil instead. This gives the coconut flavor to the chocolate and provides an amazing healthy fat to your chocolate. In fact, having a small amount of coconut  oil everyday is amazing for your health, so I consider this chocolate completely guilt-free, especially when you're using a natural sweetener that isn't so high on the glycemic index scale. I'm using maple syrup as my sweetener. I used coconut sugar once and it was not the best idea - it dropped straight to the bottom instead of spreading throughout. This may be because I was using coconut oil instead of cocoa butter which isn't as thick as cocoa butter is, though I can't be sure since I haven't tried with cocoa butter.

In this recipe you can also add any chunks of anything you may want in your chocolate such as nuts. dried fruit or rice bubbles. 

Here are the ingredients I used

 1/2 cup of coconut oil

2 tbls of maple syrup

2 tbls of cacao powder

2 tbls of dried berries

2 tbls of rice bubbles

2 tbls of almonds (not pictured)

Method:
1. Heat coconut oil in a sauce pan on low heat until melted.

2. Add maple syrup and cacao powder, stir well.

3. Lay nuts, berries, and or rice bubbles on a plate topped with wax paper.

4. Stir chocolate liquid again well directly before pouring it over the nuts, berries, and rice bubbles.

5. Place plate in freezer for a couple of hours before breaking into bark. Store in the freezer... maple syrup is liquid at room temperature and may separate at warmer temperatures.