vegan chocolate

I miss chocolate. I miss the sight of it, the smell of it, the disgusting residue it leaves on your fingers when you eat it on a hot summer day. Sure, you can roll a medjool date in coconut flakes and stick a nut into the middle, but does it really taste like an Almond Joy? The correct answer is: no, it fucking doesn't. Today, we're filling the void with a vegan version of your favorite food group and mine, chocolate.

Making chocolate seems like it would be sort of difficult to do, but if your standards are low it's really quite simple. And considering the sheer volume of product you end up with at the end and how cheap all of these ingredients are, it's a much smarter economical choice in terms of getting your fix. Seven dollars for a bag of bittersweet chocolate morsels? Hard pass. I can make the same thing out of garbage in my pantry, thanks.

one half of a cup of unsweetened cocoa powder

one half of a cup of coconut cream

one half of a cup of coconut oil

two cups of stevia

one tablespoon of vanilla

a pinch of salt

We won't be hanging out in the microwave like cavemen; this recipe involves the use of a double boiler. I thought that part would be difficult, too, but I managed to pull it off without incident. You just put a ceramic bowl over a pot of boiling water. It's easy. If I can do it, a trained dog can do it.

One thing I would like to say about this recipe is that the ingredients are all very striking in terms of appearance. There's something about the way the surfaces of fat-laden substances reflect light that I find so appealing. My camera loves it. I love it. This is the can of coconut cream.

This is the cocoa powder. It was lush and matte, perfect for the beautifully overcast light I was lucky enough to have in my kitchen on this particular day. As you admire its subtle yet alluring luster, get the ball rolling over on the stove and prepare your other ingredients.

I chose to employ a whisk for this particular task as opposed to my usually preferred silly pink spatula. Combine the liquid ingredients first and then dump in the cocoa, salt, and stevia. Once you get over that initial influx of powder, it all comes together very nicely. Adjust the levels of sweetness and saltiness to your taste.

I think this part is called "tempering," but don't quote me on that because I actually have no idea. In my head, everybody in the bowl was getting real nice and friendly. That's about as far as my expertise on the subject goes.

After about fifteen minutes of furious whisking, I decided to give the mess a break and take it off the heat. Clearly, we aren't just going to make soup and call it a day; we need to set the chocolate and freeze it into a bar. What's the best way to do this, you may ask? Haven't the foggiest. Here's what I did.

Basically, I took the biggest tupperware container I had in my arsenal and lined it sloppily with saran wrap. Those who have been with us since the emotional rollercoaster that was aquafaba day will probably have a pretty good idea of what comes next.

I have absolutely no clue how I did this without spilling the liquid chocolate everywhere. Find a nice level place in your freezer. Let it hang out in there overnight. After eighteen hours or so, your giant chocolate chunk should be all grown up and ready to shine.

I know what you're thinking, it looks a lot smaller than the vessel I just showed you ten seconds ago. No, I did not eat the rest of it before the photo session. One pitfall I ran into was underestimating the strength of the chocolate after hardening it into a solid state. This is partly due to the fact that I did not take the time to find a nice level place in my freezer for it, I just tossed it in over my shoulder willy-nilly. This resulted in a very uneven playing field and an extremely lopsided candy bar.

What you see on this cutting board is the thin end, and it would not break off without a fight. Those divots on its surface? Unsuccessful attempts to cut this thing down into lady-sized portions. After many minutes of this, I almost got desperate enough to start gnawing on the edges of it like a rat.

Honestly? It was really impressive how durable this thing was. If I would have ended up with a wimpy, fragile little wafer, the project would not have felt as much like a success as it did. This unexpected consequence also helped prevent me from inhaling the entire batch at once, which is always something you have to look out for around here, especially with something as tasty as this. The name "pinkbelly" is not just for show.

With that being said, however, storing it as a single solid brick just didn't seem practical to me in the long run. At the risk of sounding like a brute, I ditched the knife and fell back on one of my tried and true trash bags. I gently bashed it with a rolling pin until it was broken up into pieces small enough to cram into a frosted mason jar.

It's so fucking beautiful. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect this recipe to go as well as it did. Today's experiment turned out better than the real thing, dairy-free or otherwise, and this is coming from a very fat milk chocolate aficionado in recovery.

My vegan heart has been dying for something like this. For best results, store it in the freezer when not in use.