Hi everyone,

I wanted to find out... does anyone know of a brand of sugar-free/low carb chocolate bars that are made WITHOUT sugar alcohols. Those things are just nasty on my system.

Any ideas are most welcomed.

Jill in Phoenix

P.S. I have tried to make homemade SF chocolate chips by melting unsweetened baking chocolate and adding cream, splenda, davinci's, etc. but they the baking chocolate was just too pungent, I guess, to overcome. Maybe that's why the manufacturers use the sugar alcohols?!?

I like to make little puddinglike treats occassionally.

1/3 cup of ricotta cheese, 1 tbs hersheys cocoa,
1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 packet splenda

OR

1 oz of cream cheese melted, 1 TBS hersheys cocoa, 1 tsp splenda makes kind of a chocolate cheesecakey pudding

OR

1 tbs butter or coconut oil melted w/ 1 tbs hersheys cocoa w/ 1 1/2 tsp splenda and stir - then add some heavy cream and that is kind of like some uncooked brownie mix

Can you tell I have chocolate issues?!?!?

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for the reply. What I'm really wanting to find, though, is a hard chocolate bar w/o the polyols -OR- a way to make one at home. I don't want to pop a piece of chocolate bar in my mouth, per se, but love to make Dana Carpender's chocolate chip cookies, but w/o the sugar free chocolate chips with those nasty sugar alcohols.....

I'm hoping someone out there either knows of a company that makes SF chocolate bars or chips (even better) sans the SAs or has a great recipe for making some at home.

Thanks again for your post.
Jill

P.S. I have chocolate issues too!! LOL.

In short, not yet. The sugars and the sugar alcohols are what makes the commercial bars 'hard' via tempering.

Best place to look for recipes is the LowCarb Kitchen / Recipe forum, you might find some posts there using unsweetened baker's chocolate or cocoa butter as a base, there's some hope there.

www.carb-lite.au.com has recipes for making your own chocolate. (Can I link to another site???) I found this link in another forum here. I haven't tried them yet, but I have tried some others that were very good. I found lots of yummies here too. BTW I have Dana's book too. The PB silk is outrageous!!! I took it to a party the other night and it flew off the table. No one would have known it was sugar free except I told them. Again, you'd probably want to make a batch of your own chocolate first. Another great book is Eades LC Comfort foods.

Teresa

Hi Teresa,

Thank you very much. I have been to this site before, but hadn't thought about checking it for LC chocolate bar-type recipes.

I will try a few of these. My hopes is to make some that (a) tastes good-- not too strong and (b) holds up well when baked in choc chip cookies-- melts the right amount and does not turn into a puddle.

I'll post here when I figure out which one works best.

Thanks again.
Jill

I have a chocolate problem also. Have you heard of Lynn's chocolate? I had it several years ago and misplaced it when I moved. I did a search for Lynn's chocolate and behold I found it.

1 oz unsweetened chocolate(baking)
2tbsp butter
1 tbsp cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup splenda
1 oz crushed nuts (macadamias are nice)

Melt chocolate and butter, carefully. Remove from
heat, Stir in cream, Stir in cream and vanilla, Stir in Splenda. Fold in nuts. Pour into tin-foil-lined something or other. Chill

I like it very much. I can't remember how many carbs and this recipe didn't say.

Sue

Well so much for writing quickly. It was the recipe that I lost. I found another web site with the Lynne's chocolate.
This is the recipe cut in half and has the carb count.
Lynne's Chocolate
1/2 oz unsweetened chocolate(bakers) 4grmcarb/2 fiber
1 tbs butter 0.0 carbs
1/2 tsp vanilla <.50 carbs
splenda (3-4 packets)3-4 carb grams
macadamia nuts(1/2 oz) 4 carb grams/2 fiber
About 8 grams adjusted for fiber
follow reciipe instructions in previous post.

Sue

Jill,

I gave up on finding SF chocolate without the sugar alcohols, so, after a lot of experimenting and research I now make terrific SF chocolate bars and candies. I'm pretty sure I posted the recipe in Sweet Treats, so you can look there and if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

The unsweetened chocolate by itself is too bitter, so you need to add cocoa butter (food grade, of course) to make lovely dark chocolate. I buy it from www.botanistry.com, but you could do a web search to see if there are other sources. If you use really good unsweetened chocolate and the cocoa butter you wind up with chocolate as good as anything Godiva makes.

The next key is to temper the chocolate to give it that hardness, known as "snap" to chocolatiers, and so that it won't melt at room temperature. I did a search on tempering chocolate and sifted through them to find one that was doable with a double boiler and an instant read thermometer. It really isn't too hard to do, even though I am trying to justify buying a tempering machine.

HTH,

Karla

Hi Karla,

Thanks for the great suggestion. I searched the posts for your name under Sweet Treats and found the post where you talked about cocoa butter and paraffin. In the post you asked about quantities of each. Did you ever post your finalized recipe, because I couldn't find it?

Thanks again. It is definately something I'm going to try.

Jill

Jill,

If the recipe calls for paraffin, I posted it before figuring out how to temper chocolate. Now I use 4 ounces of cocoa butter and 2 ounces of Callebaut unsweetened chocolate (any high grade unsweetened chocolate will do, but IMHO there's no point in doing all this work unless you start with really good ingredients I found the Callebaut at www.chocolatesource.com and bought a 5 pound block of it :eek. I cut all of that up very fine; actually I use a pastry scraper to shave the chocolate and cocoa butter.

I follow the directions for tempering the chocolate I found at www.allrecipes.com/cb/sbs/chocolate/default.asp, which was the simplest method I could find. One note, however: in step 5 they tell you to cool the chocolate down and that one way is to add small pieces of non melted chocolate. So in the beginning I put 2/3 of the chocolate and all the cocoa butter, plus sweetener equal to about 3/4 cup of sugar, into the top of the double boiler and follow the directions. When I get to the cooling part of step 5 I add the rest of the chocolate. This speeds up the cooling.

I figured that if I were going to go as far as tempering chocolate I may as well go all the way, so I bought molds for chocolate bars, which are really cheap. I also bought molds for filled candies and am experimenting with those, too. If you are interested, the molds came from www.tcbsupply.com, but there are of course other places. But I think they were the only ones I found who had the molds for chocolate bars.

I could never live without chocolate, so I just had to find a way to make it LC. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to help.

Karla

Hi Karla,

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I picked up some food grade cocoa butter at a candy supply store today, along with an instant read thermometer, and some candy molds. (Too convenient that they had pretty much what I needed here in town!)

I have a few questions for you though, if you have a minute.

1) If I add more cream, will I get a more "milk" chocolate taste than dark? I just prefer a lighter chocolate, but it's no biggie.

2) So if I master the tempering thing (following the directions in the link you gave me), I don't need the paraffin, right? Is tempering hard to do, if I follow directions? Do you set the water temp (gas stove) to a low setting to let things melt slowly and the temp rise slowly? Or use another setting?

3) In addition to granular Splenda, do you know if you can use a SF Davinci's syrup to add more sweetness without adding a bunch of carbs, or will it make the consistency too runny? What if I added just a small amount (like a few tablespoons)? Any thoughts on this?

4) So if I'm reading all your posts correctly, you are using: a high quality, unsweetened baking chocolate, heavy cream, vanilla extract, cocoa butter, and granulated Splenda. Is that correct, or am I missing anything? (The cocoa butter replaces regular butter, right?)

5) Lastly, I bought the cocoa butter today, but they only had it in 1 ounce bars at $2.50 ea. I'm assuming I can get it in a bigger size (e.g. bulk) for a lot cheaper. Any website suggestions?

Thanks again for EVERYTHING! I'll let you know how things turn out.

Jill in Phoenix


P.S. Sorry this is a bit long. But since the ingredients are a bit expensive, I thought I'd get as much info up front, before I give it a go!

Jill,

1) I don't use cream, just the chocolate, cocoa butter, sweetener, and sometimes flavoring. The flavorings have to be the ones meant for candy, which are oil-based, as opposed to the ones for baking, many of which are water based. In sweet treats there is a post suggesting that it might be possible to make milk chocolate by reducing heavy cream and adding it to the chocolate; the title of the post is "real chocolate". I haven't tried this because I like dark chocolate, but it sounded like a good idea.

2)You are right, I only used the paraffin in an attempt to make the keep the chocolate from melting at room temperature; once I found out how to temper the chocolate I didn't need it any more.

Tempering isn't hard, as long as you have time to concentrate on doing only that and you aren't trying to do three other things at the same time It's just a matter of following the directions. I let the water heat on my electric stove until it is hot but not boiling and let the chocolate and cocoa butter melt slowly, stirring it often with a wooden spoon.

3) I wouldn't use the Davinci syrups because they are water based and even a drop of water will cause the chocolate to "seize" and will ruin it.

4) see #1

5) www.botanistry.com has food grade cocoa butter in bulk, so you can buy a pound or whatever you want.

Do let me know how things go and what you think of the results. Good luck!

Karla

Hi again.

Thank you SO much for replying so quickly.

I think I'm going to make the first batch with just the 3 ingredients you list and then try a separate one with the reduced cream. I'll let you know how they go.

I do have a few additional clarifying questions. Sorry for being a pest!

1) From what I've read, you use 1 part chocolate, 2 parts cocoa butter, and sweetener to taste, correct? (I'll be using granular Splenda.)

2) Do you do all 6 steps of the tempering process? The reason I ask is that step 6 says something like if you are going "to use it for your coating or molding needs." By molding, I'm assuming they are talking about pouring it into a mold. But I wanted to make sure. For some reason it confused me.

3) Do you add all the ingredients at step 4 as the chocolate starts to melt? Or some other time?

4) Do you pour the still-hot chocolate directly into the plastic candy molds and place them in the freezer immediately? Or do you cool them to room temp (or whatever) before pouring them into the molds and placing in freezer?

Thanks again! Hope these questions aren't a big ol' pain in the touche!

Jill

Jill,

Ask away; it's fun to find someone else interested in making chocolate!

1) Yes, those are the three main ingredients; I usually use at least 4 ounces of cocoa butter and 2 of chocolate because I figure I might as well make a bunch while I'm at it. But for your first time it makes sense to use less, since you are experimenting.

2) Yes, I do all the steps. It does sound a little confusing, but they just mean that you need to bring the mixture back up to 90 degrees before using it for anything.

3) At step 4 I add the cocoa butter, 2/3 of the chocolate, the sweetener, and the flavoring, if I use one. In step 5, once the mixture reaches 110 degrees I add the rest of the chocolate to help it cool to 85 degrees faster.

4)You pour the chocolate into the molds as soon as it comes back up to 90 degrees. The molds look thin, but they are meant to take the heat of the chocolate. If you wait until it is room temperature, the chocolate will solidify and your double boiler becomes one big mold!

About the flavorings: I use the LorAnn candy flavorings, which I'm sure they have at that store where you bought the molds and stuff. You just have to experiment with those, adding a little at a time. I have also used the Boyajian orange oil to make orange flavored chocolate, about which my husband is STILL talking (so I guess I should make it again)! I usually add some at the beginning, then taste when the mixture cools to 85 and add more before warming it up to 90. But for your first try you might just skip the flavorings and stick to the plain chocolate, which is VERY good all by itself.

Let me know how it goes or if you have more questions.

Karla