Homemade Sugar-Free Almond Butter Chocolate Fudge

I am totally addicted to these!!!  I have a carob bark recipe and I found some similar recipes to this chocolate.  I sort of combined them all and tweaked them a bit to be this...

  

Almond Butter Chocolate Fudge/Cups

Ingredients:

•  1/2 Cup coconut oil (melted but not hot)
• 1/2 Cup raw cocoa powder (cacao or carob powder will work as well, make sure the ingredient label states no sugar!)
•  1/2 Cup almond butter (or nut butter of your choosing, I used my own homemade almond butter, click here for the recipe)
• 1/4 Cup honey or Stevia to taste (I like it best with local honey)
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (no sugar or corn syrup added)
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Preparation:
Heat coconut oil until melted, but not hot, on low heat, and mix well with the almond butter.
Remove from heat and add the cocoa powder, honey, vanilla and salt, mix well to combine. The batter should be more of a liquid than a solid. 
Line muffin tin with cupcake liners.  Add the almond butter mixture and fill each cup about ¼ - ½ inch full.  You should have about a dozen.  You do not need to spray the liners, I had no trouble get them out when I did not spray them.
Stick tray into freezer for about 10-15 minutes.  Remove from freezer, unwrap and enjoy!

~These can be stored in an airtight container in the freezer for a more of a solid chocolate or in the refrigerator for more of a fudgy type of bar.

I think when I made them with the carob powder that I burnt the carob a little bit and that's why it got a little gritty.  But I thought they were still ever so tasty with the carob powder!

I made another batch with Stevia instead of honey and the carob powder and they looked more like the picture at the top with the cocoa powder, so that's why I think I may have slightly burned the carob powder.  I actually just read that it is possible to burn carob powder.

I'd have to say I like them best with honey and not Stevia.  And either carob or cocoa powder.  I have not had cacao powder yet.  One website I was at said cocoa and cacao were the same and another said they weren't.  In making cocoa the beans are roasted and in making cacao the beans are not roasted.  Apparently in the roasting process you loose some nutrients.  I don't have cacao powder but I'm interested in trying it.

I don't normally consider things sugar free if they use honey, so I should say it's refined sugar free.  But if you use Stevia then it is sugar free.

If you love your candy bought at the store you may not be a huge fan of these, they are not your typical chocolate peanut butter cup.  I was sugar free for awhile when I was on the Candida Diet then after 6 months of being totally strict I sort of allowed myself some treats now and then.  I don't eat near as much sugar or candy as I did before I did the Candida Diet.  I do try to not eat sugar but I love chocolate and peanut butter.  And these are an amazing substitute for me!  It made my day that I've found these!  I will gladly eat these over store bought chemical filled chocolate!  But that's not to say that I will always be good and never eat the store bought chocolate again, because I know there will be times that I will.  But when the sweet tooth hits I'm so happy to have these!  I think they taste great and I really like them, maybe a little too much!  In my opinion they are way healthier then the chocolate you buy in the store!
My 2 year old daughter also loves these!

Rock Candy

Back on August 1st Tanner helped me attempt to make rock candy.  You do 3 parts sugar to 1 part water.  You boil the water adding 1 cup of sugar at a time, stirring until it's dissolved, then adding another cup, until it doesn't dissolve anymore.  Then you let it sit for 3-7 days. 

 You cut the tip off a wooden skewer and use a close pin to keep it close the middle of the glass and leave it about an inch from the bottom.  And you can use food coloring to make it different colors. 

 The first batch never crystalized!  I guess we didn't have enough sugar.  So I ended up re-boiling it.  I combined the red and clear, boiled it and added more sugar till it really couldn't dissolve anymore.  Then I combined the blue and green and added more sugar.  This time with in a day we had crystals forming.  The kids were so excited!

We finally had rock candy a few days after I re-boiled it and added more sugar.  However, I think I added too much sugar.  All the blues were stuck to the bottom of the glass, I had the the skewer too close to the bottom.  I managed to chip away with a butter knife and free one blue one.

Tanner didn't want to eat any!  So the other 3 ate them...

Kolin, Mackenzie and Jayden

 Because I believe I had too much sugar, we had a lot of crystals on the glass and I was only able to get 5 successfully out of the glasses, without breaking too much of it, because of it being stuck to glass.

And I had those glasses soaking in hot water for days until all that sugar was dissolved and gone, the stuff that got stuck to the glass.

But it was a fun experiment for the kids to do and watch!

Candy Pretzels

I had seen this idea all over Pinterest, on the back of the bag of Rolo's and Debby the Tupperware lady told me about them.  I like to try and do something different every year for the teachers and bus driver.  So we decided to make these this year.  There is a pretzel on the borrow, a Rolo or Hershey Kiss then and M&M on top.  For Dave's mom we put pecans on top of them.

Tanner's Preschool Halloween Party

Here are the chocolate covered Oreo Pops Dave made for the boys to take to their classmates.  They are supposed to be pumpkins.  I think they are cute and they were very yummy!

It was still rainy and wet from the hurricane so they paraded inside...

I have such a cute little Dino!

And look at this cute costume my friend, Jessica, made her sone... It's a Kubota tractor, she didn't have the tires on it for preschool, but afterwards at the Market she did.  Her hubby works for Kubota, so cute!

 Tanner's teachers and class...

Chocolate Lollipops

Jayden goes to preschool on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays, so the 10th of February was his Valentines day party.  I love the chocolate made from the chocolate wafers and so I decided Jayden would give one to each of his classmates, we gave like 5 each to his teachers and then handed them out to friends and family.  I had the rose molds and the hearts with the doves from our wedding.  Dave and I made these for our wedding, 9 1/2 years ago and I saved the molds.  And we bought two other heart molds for Valentine's Day.  So we were working with 6 molds (cuz we had 2 rose molds and 2 heart and dove molds).  And we had 6 pounds of chocolate wafers.

I started around 2pm when Tanner went down for his nap.  When Dave came home he and Jayden washed their hands and started helping.  I left the two of them to work on it while I made dinner and cleaned up from dinner.  And I finished them up when Dave left shortly after 8pm to go play basketball at church.  In all we made about 95 chocolate lollipops.  It took a long time to do it, but we sure love them!

While we were waiting for the chocolate in the molds to harden or while we ate dinner and whatever.  Dave had the brilliant idea to set the squeeze bottles of chocolate in a bowl of water on top of the coal stove.  This way it would stay warm and we didn't have to microwave it again.  He's so smart!