Re: Homemade chocolate - The Recipe
I spent over a day on this including bG testing, i.e. at least two hours between tastings with preprandial, +1:00 and +2:00 hr testing. So, if you don't like what you see, don't whinge, just move on .... :evil:. If you have any sensible questions or feedback then I'll be glad to hear from you, although I'm no expert on chocolate-making. Please read the whole thing first.
All the ingredients came from Tesco (the palm sugar granules were hidden amongst the Thai ingredients and took a while to find).
My readings, from eating 15g chocolate (about 1/6th 100g bar of bought dark chocolate) from the recipe with granulated palm sugar included, easily the best tasting for us, and done before any other food today and no exercise, were
5.4 at +0:00,
6.3 at +1:00, &
5.3 at +1:30
This was using palm sugar granules at 20% (40g) of the total ingredients in grams which could probably be reduced to 15% (30g) or 10% (20g) according to personal taste and spikes.
Note that I have delayed insulin release, always peaking at +1:00 but recovering at +2:00 which is not typical it would seem. I am classified 'officially' as 'diabetes resolved' but I'm not taking any chances so I regard myself as pre-diabetic or impaired glocuse tolerant.
Here is the recipe for homemade chocolate (with the addition of water/milk for ganache-style). I tried 4 recipes, 1 with water added, 1 with dried milk, 1 with full-fat milk and one with palm sugar (jaggery). Don’t baulk at the jaggery before you try it and test it on yourself. Although it’s sugar, it’s got ½ the sucrose of refined sugar and I wouldn’t touch artificial sweeteners with a bargepole myself. Also, you may be happy with no sweetness so you can leave it out. If you are lactose intolerant you can use cocoa butter in place of dairy butter and maybe soya milk etc. if you want to add milk. I haven’t tried these ingredients as yet.
We didn’t like either the dried milk or wet milk recipes so I won’t bother anymore with these. Feel free to try yourselves. WARNING – adding liquid, e.g. water or milk, will change the texture and the chocolate will not harden completely. But, that is fine if you want a ganache-type finish.
The basic mix based on 125g cocoa powder are
125g Green & Blacks cocoa power(carbs 15.5g, sugar 0.5g) OR
CadBury’s Bourneville cocoa powder (carbs 13g, sugar 0g) according to the labelling.
75g butter (salted or unsalted)
NOTE: - You could add another 10-30g butter which should make it harder if you want, but you will probably have to reduce any other liquids if you include water or milk. Also, some butters have some sugar in them (maybe all to some extent) so you need to check.
40g palm sugar (or less) granules or slivers from block melted in as little water as possible until dissolved.
NOTE: - I managed 30ml of boiled water poured over the granules and mixed.
80ml water or milk ONLY if you want a ganache-style chocolate.
NOTE: - My mixing skills are **** and I ended up adding 125ml water before I got the right consistency but I’m not sure if I needed that much. It could also have been a temperature issue.
Warm the butter in a glass, ceramic or metal bowl over a bain marie until soft. Add the cocoa powder and blend with an electric mixer (preferably) until smooth. A mixer with solid stirrers worked better than the floppy stirrer on my Philips hand blender. Add the palm sugar syrup and blend in. Continue to heat and mix over the bain marie until hot but not bubbling. Now you can add other ingredients of your choice and blend in.
Pour into a container (for ganache-style) or ice cube moulds for hard chocolate– mine take about 15g chocolate per slot. Place in refrigerator for a couple of hours until set.
Now get your meter out and chomp away!