This was my second attempt ever at making chocolate from scratch. The first time was about a year ago and I failed miserably. For some reason the mixture split, I may have over blended it. This time was a bit better and I am very happy with the result.

I have been trying to think of healthy sweet treats I could make to help curb my sugar cravings in the afternoons so I’ve been playing with different bliss ball recipes lately.

So I went through my pantry and found some cacao butter that had been sitting there for the last year and thought “what could I make with this?”. Chocolate was the obvious answer. Then I remembered I had some cherries in the freezer and I always have desiccated coconut as a pantry staple, so cherry ripe came to my mind.

This is a much healthier version obviously as it is much lower in sugar and only contains natural ingredients. I sweetened my chocolate with rice malt syrup which is a processed ingredient, so not really considered raw but it can be replaced with maple syrup – just add a smaller amount though as maple is a lot sweeter than rice syrup. I find that rice syrup works better for me as I can’t really eat much sugar and it is much lower in fructose and glucose than other natural sweeteners.