Making Homemade Chocolate Chips…In Detail
ByI posted about making homemade chocolate chips a long time ago. Since that time and especially within the past few weeks, I’ve received several emails asking for more help and detail about how this works. It seems that many of you who tried the recipe are having trouble getting everything to melt and dissolve and mix like it should.
In light of your chocolate chip frustration…I decided to do a more thorough tutorial about how I make chocolate chips. Chocolate and frustration should never be in the same sentence together. Ever.
You can use coconut oil or butter to make your chips. I used butter this time because I’m almost out of coconut oil. Butter doesn’t quite work as well as coconut oil. They tend to be softer with butter…but still oh so good. Especially when you put them in these.
Here again is the recipe:
Homemade Chocolate Chips
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup rapadura or sucanat
1 cup coconut oil or butter
1 T. vanilla
Begin by placing the cocoa, sucanat and butter (or coconut oil) into a quart sized jar.
Fill a small saucepan with two or three inches of water. Place the jar into the saucepan/water. Turn the heat on medium/high to begin melting the butter.
Stir often. After five minutes, my mixture looked like this:
To take each picture, I pulled the jar out of the pan of water. The steam was fogging up my camera lense! I quickly put the jar back into the water to resume melting process. Just telling you that so you know that you don’t have to pull your jar out of the pan every five minutes. But you already knew that, right?
After ten minutes, my mixture looked like this:
It took a total of thirteen minutes for the butter to completely melt. I then pulled it out of the water, added the vanilla and stirred well.
The mixture in my jar looked and smelled SO GOOD that I wanted to drink it. But I didn’t. That would have made quite a mustache.
Pour the mixture into a 9×13 inch pan covered with parchment paper. Spread it as evenly as you can.
As you can hopefully tell from the following picture, I still have a little sucanat that refused to completely dissove. Can you see the bits of chunkyness? That’s been one of the questions I’ve received from several of you. But…the little bits of chunkyness don’t hurt anything. My chocolate chips tasted just fine!
Place your pan into the refrigerator. It takes a couple of hours for the chocolate to harden. Once it’s hardened, remove it from the parchment paper and break it into chunks. Store in refrigerator in an airtight container (unless you and your family eat them all first).
I hope this is helpful! It’s very fun to make your own chocolate chips and oh so very yummy!
And now…no matter how hot it is today…I may need to use my freshly made chocolate chips to bake brownies. After I eat some green beans and broccoli from my garden of course…
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Thanks for sharing this again! I recently read that many chocolate chips are GM, and I assumed that organic chocolate chips would be super expensive – this sounds like an easy and cost-effective alternative!
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Thank you! I’m so looking forward to trying this. Thanks for the detail so I know what to expect.
Love your blog!
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My daughter was just asking me last week if we could make our own chocolate chips! She is going to be thrilled to see a tutorial! thanks so much!
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Oh, I’ve wanted to make my own for a while now, this is great!
I was curious if they melted quickly once out of the fridge/freezer. I’m guessing if I used CO, it would melt faster, but butter maybe not.
We love those!
Esp in your breakfast cookies.
Thanks for the great tutorial!
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Laura Reply:
July 13th, 2009 at 8:56 am
I actually find that the chocolate chips made with butter melt faster once out of the fridge. I get them out just before I’m ready to add them to my cookies, etc.
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This is a great tutorial and I can’t wait to do this. I just have one question. What is sucanat and where in the grocery store might I find it? Thanks.
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Laura Reply:
July 13th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Sucanat is “dehydrated cane sugar juice” and is one of the healthiest forms of sugar you can find. I order mine through my health food coop. You can try looking at a health food store, or even in your grocery store in the health food section. OR…here’s a link where you can get it from Amazon: Wholesome Sweeteners Fair Trade Organic Sucanat (Brown Sugar), 16-Ounce Pouches (Pack of 12)
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Brenda Reply:
July 13th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Thank you so much…I’ve seen it listed in a few recipes but hand no clue what it was. Now I know what to look for and thanks for the link to Amazon.
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I did have trouble with this. I think because I used raw sugar? Also I mixed the chocolate chunk into the breakfast cookies and had a terrible chocolate mess …the cookies tasted fine. (by the way I did chill the whole thing over night).
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What is rapadura (or sucanat for that matter) and where do you puchase it?
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I’ve made these several times, and they are awesome! My evaporated cane juice doesn’t fully dissolve either, but I don’t mind the crunch in the chocolate chunks. I usually refrigerate the chocolate in the original melting container, and stir frequently. I try to catch it just before it sets up, give it a final stir, then pour it out onto the parchment paper. My theory is that the undissolved sugar will be suspended in the chocolate instead of sinking to the bottom. I’m not sure it’s worth the extra work though.
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Thank you so much for posting healthier “sweets” alternatives! I love your site and have told so many of my friends/family about it! I’m a young wife/mom and recently had a bit of a health scare, so now more than ever I’ve committed my health to God…I was harming my body with all the bad food I was eating! ..my first step was to cut out pop..SO hard..but I’m sticking with it! Thanks for posting healthier alternatives that are still yummy!!
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Could the butter mixture be melted in the microwave as opposed to the stove?
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Laura Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Hmm…I don’t know. I don’t use a microwave and while I’m sure the butter would melt in the microwave and everything would mix in…I don’t know if the consistency would be right.
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Paul Reply:
February 4th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
The issue with microwaving chocolate is tempurature regulation. The chocolate has a tendancy to burn, and the butter will pop and make a huge mess. If you can keep the chocolate from burning, and maybe put some sort of vented top on the container, (it would prevent the mess but might cause condensation, which could drip into the mix, possibly binding it up) it might work a bit faster.
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Hi! We love the chocolate chunks. It’s like a little Almond Joy! I also could not get the rapadura to melt, so now I don’t feel so bad. I tried using the chips in cookies, and they instantly melted and created one large, thin cookie on the pan. Has this happened to you? I followed your directions for cookies in your “What to do with the cocoa in your kitchen”. Would love to know of any solutions to this problem or if I’m the only one that has had it.
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Laura Reply:
July 14th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
You’re definitely not the only one who has had this trouble! Check out this post! http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/healthy-treat-for-today-whole-wheat-chocolate-chip-cookies
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Carmen Reply:
October 20th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I just made the chocolate chips. So, I haven’t tried them in cookies yet. But, have you tried refrigerating your cookie dough between batches. I have done this with other cookies and liked the way they turned out. But, don’t know if it will work in this case.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Good to know about the undissolved sugar. I will not be anxious about them next time. = )
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I made this yesterday to stir into homemade ice cream during the last bit of churning. It was delicious, one of my kids picked them all out to save for last!
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ok, thanks! If I try and make this using a microwave, I’ll be sure to let you know!
I don’t see why it would be any different, but who knows!
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Wow, I’ve got to try this!
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Have you ever experimented and tried to make peanut butter chips? I searched for a recipe for them online, but didn’t see any. If find one, or come up with one yourself, can you please post it? Thanks!
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Hey, when I’m making recipes that I really don’t want to be chunky from the raw sugar, I blend the demerara, sucanat, turbinado, whatever kind you use, in the blender until it’s powdered. I even made a lemon cake last week that I switched out for whole wheat flour and turbinado. It called for a powdered sugar glaze and I had success using the blended sugar for this. It was a teeny tiny bit grainy still, but if you were melting it in a recipe, I’m sure it would totally dissolve.
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This looks so easy and yummy. I’m going to make them today. A perfect rainy day project.
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