Sunday, June 7, 2009

Making Sugar Free Chocolate

If you or a loved one is Diabetic or is on a diet where they can’t tolerate sugar making your own sugar free chocolate is a great way that you or they can enjoy a sweet treat without sugar. If you are making desserts for a party or dinner and have friends or family attending it would be a thoughtful gesture to include some sugar free chocolates on the menu so that the people who can’t have sugar or are watching their sugar intake could still have a nice dessert.

There are several ways that you can make your own sugar free chocolate. If you are handy in the kitchen and feel comfortable making your own chocolate you can use a base chocolate like unsweetened chocolate that has no sugar in it but you’ll have to add something to the chocolate to make it sweet. If you can use a sugar substitute that has the same consistency that sugar has that is probably the best route but you can also add things like fruit juice to the unsweetened chocolate to sweeten it.

When you are combining unsweetened chocolate with a sugar substitute you should always mix the two ingredients when they are dry, otherwise they won’t combine properly and they will separate when they are wet. If you are using fruit juice to sweeten the unsweetened chocolate pour in very small amounts and make sure that you add a thickener to the chocolate to keep the chocolate at the right consistency.

If you don’t feel comfortable trying to take an unsweetened chocolate base and trying to sweeten it yourself you can always buy sugar free or diabetic friendly chocolate in blocks or in chips and then use that as a base for your chocolate treats.

Once you have an unsweetened or sugar free chocolate base you can make chocolate candy the same way that you would with regular chocolate by pouring it into molds and letting the candy harden. But if you want to make a fancy chocolate dessert like a chocolate mousse, or a chocolate dipping sauce for fresh fruit, or even sugar free hot chocolate you can still use the sugar free chocolate as a base and then you can experiment with different recipes using the sugar free chocolate as an ingredient.

You can even make sugar free chocolate chip cookies by chopping up small chips of the sugar free chocolate base and adding them to some sugar free cookie dough although you will have to be careful what temperature you bake the cookies at or the chocolate will melt.

If you are planning on making holiday treats or chocolates as gifts for your kid’s teachers, friends and neighbors, or anyone that you don’t know very well it’s always a good idea to include at least a few sugar free chocolates in the gift package because you never know if someone can have chocolate that has regular sugar in it or not. People that can’t have sugar will find it very thoughtful that you included some sugar free chocolates in the gift.