How to Make Your Own Easter Chocolates

Easter and chocolate are practically synonymous these days. And with everyone talking about the benefits of eating chocolate, we might think that so much chocolate around Easter must be for a good reason. Unfortunately, most of the chocolates that are sold during Easter time tend to be sugar-laden, milk chocolates that are less than desirable. So what is a health conscious mom to do to keep her children satisfied during Easter? Make your own Easter chocolates of course! By making your own chocolates, you will know exactly what goes into each chocolate and you can even turn the chocolate making process into a fun family bonding activity with your children. So what are you waiting for? Let's learn how to make your own Easter chocolates!

Ingredients for Homemade Easter Chocolate 1) Raw chocolate, or alternatively high cocoa percentage dark chocolate (look for 70% or more pure dark chocolate bars) 2) Some plastic or metal molds: you can find these at most party stores. You can even get fun Easter theme shapes such as bunnies, eggs, chickens and so on. These are fairly inexpensive and you can reuse the molds every year! 3) Different fillings for the chocolates. Here are some suggestions of good fillings for home made chocolates: coconut flakes, raw nuts such as almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, peanuts, raisins, dates, and other dried fruits, mint extract, almond extract, orange extract or any other flavor you would like to flavor your chocolates.

So here are the basic steps to your first homemade easter chocolate making adventure:

1) First open the pure chocolate bars and break them down into smaller pieces.

2) Set a pan over the fire and begin to melt the chocolate into the pan. If you find that the dark chocolate is too bitter, you can add different ingredients that you may have lying around the house: peanut butter, almond butter, honey, soy or almond milk, or any combination of these. Experiment and see what tastes best. Keep the fire low, you just want to melt the chocolate - you are not trying to cook it.

3) If you want to create plain chocolate, now you simply need to pour the molten chocolate into your molds. At this point you could place the molds in the freezer to facilitate the cooling of the chocolate. After a few hours and the chocolate has solidified, you can just turn the molds upside down and pop the chocolates out of the molds.

4) If you want to get fancy with the chocolate making try some of these ideas: with a small batch of molten chocolate, throw a handful or more of dried coconut flakes and stir. Then scoop out a spoonful of coconut-chocolate and place it on wax paper to cool. This will form delicious coconut chocolate macaroon-like balls once it has solidified. This is a great way to use up leftover chocolate. You could even use the coconut-chocolate mixture for your Easter molds and have coconutty easter bunnies.

5) Another fun idea is to create a filling that you will infuse with a certain flavor: mint, orange, almond or vanilla. The idea is to use something like peanut butter, almond butter or any other of your favorite creams, add some flavoring and form a small ball in the bottom of a spoon. Then throw the ball into molten chocolate and scoop it back out. Place the chocolate covered ball on wax paper and wait for it to dry.

6) If your chocolates are not solidifying fast enough, just place them in the refrigerator or freezer to speed it up. I understand how much your children will want to try the finished product. Of course it is always fun to try the molten chocolate and all of the other ingredients along the way.

Homemade Easter Chocolates

As you can see, making homemade easter chocolates is easter than it seems. In fact the main investment is in buying easter chocolate molds. After that, all of you need to do is getting cooking with your family. As you can see, you might save a lot of money by buying all of your ingredients separately and making your chocolates fresh. You might also want to try experimenting with white chocolates as well. Then you can make swirly white and black chocolate easter bunnies to mimic the patched easter bunnies out in the real world!