Homemade Coffee Chocolate

Happy Holidays and New Year to all and it’s time for something special – Homemade Chocolates! Let us start with one of the most popular of these today – Coffee Chocolate.
Like many of us, I used to buy Homemade Chocolates in departmental stores but those available are really priced high. I have been wondering how one could prepare these at home and how much would they really cost (in terms of both time and money) to prepare at home. I attended a few classes for making Homemade Chocolates and learnt how to make great variety of delicious chocolates at home. As you will learn below, preparing these at home is quite easy and you can save significantly when compared with buying them from the stores. Hence you and your friends or family gets to enjoy twice as many number of chocolates at home while giving a real sense of achievement and pride to you when others find them real fresh, yummy and tastier than those sold in stores.

For those of you who have never tried this at home before and still doubtful if it is worth the effort, I can assure you that these chocolates that you can make at home will come out really really well, both taste and look wise if you just spend a few minutes understanding the recipe for it posted here. And there is no chance of you getting bored with these in near future because; you can try huge variety of chocolate based recipes – simple great tasting Oil Essence based Chocolates which come in a number of popular flavors like Coffee, Orange, Mango, Vanilla etc. , Center filling Chocolates, Truffles, Rock Chocolates with dry fruits, Biscuits and Fruits (Banana, Apple, Strawberries, Pineapple) coated with Chocolates like the Chocolate Banana Stick etc.

Below I explain the recipe for Coffee Chocolate – an easy and basic Homemade Chocolate which can be easily prepared at home. And it requires just about 15 minutes of your time to make them. Before you attempt this, do read my earlier post How to Melt Chocolates for detailed directions on melting the chocolates. This step is common to many varieties of chocolates you can prepare at home and hence will serve you well whenever you attempt to prepare of these chocolates of various forms and tastes. Always use the oil based essences when mixing directly with melted chocolates; water based essences make the chocolates to decay. You may use water based essences for Center filling Chocolates. As noted below, using the below method, apart from Coffee flavor, one can obtain variety of Homemade chocolate flavors by using other oil based essences like Orange, Mint, Vanilla, Butter Scotch, Lemon etc. Recipe is the same, changing the essence will give you chocolate of different flavor. And if you can obtain varied shapes of chocolates by changing the mould used for making chocolates. There are a number of them available – heart shapred, bird shaped, square or star shaped and so on. Below I use the Coffee bean shaped mould for prepare Homemade Coffee Chocolate!

Note: I buy all the ingredients like Chocolates, essences/flavors, moulds etc. from General Food Additives, located near Seshadripuram, Bangalore here. This store is known for reasonable rates and quality materials.

Time to Prepare : 15 min

How to Make Homemade Coffee Chocolate:

1. Take 2 microwave safe bowls to melt the Chocolates. Also, have the plastic chocolate moulds ready before you start off. I used coffee bean shaped mould here but you are free to use moulds of your choice, of any shape.
2. In one of the microwave safe bowls, place the chopped Dark Chocolate and melt the Chocolates for around 1-1/2 minutes in Microwave.
3. In another microwave safe bowl, place the chopped Milk Chocolate and heat and melt for nearly a minute in Microwave. The Milk Chocolates take less time to melt than Dark Chocolates. Make sure you read through the detailed instructions in my previous post on how to melt the chocolates.
4. Now mix the two melted Chocolates, Dark and Milk ones, and stir well till the melted Chocolate looks shiny or has a glossy finish. Ensure that there are no lumps formed when mixing.

   

5. Now add the oil based Coffee essence to the above mixture and mix well.
6. Take a deep chocolate mould and pour the melted Coffee Chocolate into the moulds as seen in the image.
7. Leave the filled mould in the freezer for about 10 minutes to take shape. Once the Chocolates are set, remove from the freezer and leave aside for about 5 minutes.
8. On a butter paper or on a plate, turn the chocolate filled mould over and pat the mould gently. The Coffee Chocolates should come out of mould easily taking the shape of the mould. As mentioned earlier, I used Coffee bean shape mould, so I got the Coffee Chocolate in Coffee bean shape!
9. One can serve the delicious chocolates now. If you plan to preserve these Coffee Chocolates, wrap them in a wrapping sheet by cutting the paper into rectangle shapes and wrap it as shown in the image below.

1. Now enjoy the easy to make great tasting Homemade Coffee Chocolates at any time of your choice. Store the home-prepared chocolates in an air-tight container in a cool place. Do not store the Homemade Chocolates in refrigerator.

Further Notes:

1. If you like the strong flavor of dark chocolates, you can vary the relative measurements of Dark and Milk chocolates. You may add 3/4 cup of Dark Chocolate and 1/4 cup of Milk Chocolate. I usually prefer each of these varieties to be in equal quantities. You may even forego Milk Chocolates completely and go with Dark Chocolates only of instead of melting and mixing the Milk Chocolate.
2. Aside from Coffee flavor, one can obtain variety of Homemade chocolate flavors by
   a) using Oil based essences like Orange, Mint, Vanilla, Butter Scotch, Lemon etc., and
   b) by changing the measurements and proportions of Dark, Milk or White Chocolates.

1. For Orange, Mint or Lemon flavored chocolates, use White chocolates. This provides good taste as well as good look to the Chocolates.
2. The time taken to melt the Chocolates may vary since this depends on the model, make and configuration of your microwave. I have a Convection mode Microwave with higher temperature settings and hence takes less time to melt the Chocolates, This microwave has higher temperature settings than normal or grill mode microwave.