Dark Chocolate with Puffed Rice and Coconut Sugar
Today I will share with you a perfect recipe for those busy days when you are craving something sweet, but don’t have that much time on your hand.
To make this chocolate with puffed rice (or chocolate turrón as my friend likes to call it) you will only need three ingredients, one bowl, five to ten minutes, and some patience to let it cool down completely before you can eat it.
This kind of sweet snack has a special place in my heart, and I am sure that many people who grew up in Croatia in the 90’s or before that can relate. The puffed rice chocolate bars used to be popular here, ever since they were first produced in the 60’s by one of the most famous Croatian chocolate factories. It used to be one of the staple sweets in the times when all those imported goodies were not that easily available in the Balkans.
I remember loving the puffed rice chocolate as a kid, so I was excited to create a recipe for a healthier version that I can enjoy today, when I am much more careful with what I put in my body.
A delicious sweet made from only three natural ingredients
In this recipe I decided to use only a couple of natural ingredients, to keep it simple and as healthy as possible. I used cacao paste, coconut sugar and puffed whole grain rice. If you are avoiding sugar, you can substitute it with xylitol or powdered stevia leaves.
Cacao paste or cacao liquor is a mass that you get after blending cacao beans – so, it is basically a 100% pure chocolate. If you would like to find out how to make your own cacao paste from cacao beans at home, you can read this article where I explained the whole process.
Making the rice chocolate is fairly simple: just melt the cacao paste over a double boiler, add the powdered coconut sugar, whisk well to combine and add the rice. Mix with a spatula, transfer into a mould and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours to cool down.
Although the temptation might be big, it is worth waiting for the chocolate to harden and get nice and crunchy. To make the process much shorter, you can put it in the freezer instead of the fridge.
Once the chocolate has cooled down completely, it can be slices into chunks and kept at the room temperature. It will keep the good old “snap when broken” and its crunchy consistency even though it was not tempered.
Dark Chocolate with Puffed Rice (Vegan, Refined Sugar Free)
Quick and easy vegan dark chocolate with puffed rice made with cacao paste and coconut blossom sugar.
Ingredients
- 150 g (5.3 oz) cacao paste
- 40 g (1.4 oz) puffed whole grain rice
- 70 g (2.5 oz) coconut blossom sugar
Instructions
- Melt the cacao paste over a double boiler (simply put a bowl with cacao paste over a pot with boiling water and let the steam heat the bowl over the lowest heat). You can keep the bowl with cacao paste on the heat until all the ingredients mixed together.
- Grind the coconut sugar into a fine powder. You can do this in a blender, food processor, or in a coffee grinder.
- Add the powdered coconut sugar into the bowl with melted cacao paste and whisk well to combine.
- Add the rice into the mixture and use a silicone spatula to combine it with the chocolate. Make sure all the rice is nicely covered with chocolate.
- Transfer the chocolate into a mould or any wide dish, press gently with the spatula to straighten the surface, and put in the fridge.
- Keep it in the fridge for a couple of hours, until the chocolate hardens completely. After it has cooled down, it can be sliced into chunks and kept at the room temperature.
Notes
* You can make your own cacao paste at home from cacao beans. I described how to do it in this recipe.
* I like to use whole grain rice for this recipe, but any kind of puffed rice will do. Just make sure to get the rice that was not sweetened (or if it is sweetened with a non-refined sweetener, just keep in mind that you might want to reduce the amount of coconut sugar in the recipe to avoid making it too sweet; you can give it a taste and see your preference!).
* If you are avoiding any kind of sugar, you can make this chocolate completely sugar-free, or substitute the coconut sugar with xylitol.
