These just so happen to be one of my favourite things to make these days - they taste amazing, are a healthier alternative to eating chunks of white chocolate and they look so pretty! They keep really well in the fridge too.
Being on a sugar free crusade there’s been things that I have missed along the way - one being white chocolate. I’d love to say my penchant for white chocolate was a refined one with cravings for the likes of chocolate & raspberry cheese cake or something similar. But, no I’m talking plain old chocolate buttons of the creamy white variety peddled mostly to kids (although I would have been partial to a bit of the cheese cake too!)
The thing with white chocolate, unlike its dark counterpart is it’s ridiculously hard to get a sugar free version that ins’t packed with all sorts of nasties and not overly priced. That being said, even the sugared variety of WC is often packed with all sorts of ingredients too!
I've been experimenting for a while with white chocolate recipes - I’ll be posting my ginger white chocolate one soon. One of the most common things to come up is the need for lecithin - which is an emulsifier that helps stabilise the fats at room temperature (stops it becoming an oily melting mess!) I haven’t used this in mine and instead added 2 tbsp of melted coconut butter.
There’s a few more steps to making this and is a little trickier than making dark chocolate, the first being to make sure you blitz the milk/cream powder and stevia (if you’re using stevia powder) together in to a fine powder. This helps it combine better with the melted cacao butter and helps you achieve that silky smooth consistency. The powdered milk is also a key ingredient whether that be whole milk powder or the vegan option coconut milk powder. Milk in its liquid form won’t work.
I always like to make things using only whole food ingredients that are as close to their natural form as possible. This is one of those recipes that requires a sweetener. I tend not to use these and will only ever sweeten with dates, bananas or apple and keep away from the hyper sweet flavours that can trigger more cravings for sugar. If ever I use a sweetenr, I’ll use Dr Coys stevia for a number of reasons, firstly I like the integrity of their brand, its organic and non GMO and unlike a lot of other sweeteners, it doesn’t have that nasty after taste! If you want an even smoother consistency, you could use stevia drops.
Here’s what you’ll need to make these heavenly white chocolate bliss balls that are gluten free and can be made vegan too:
Bliss balls
12 soft dates, seeds removed
1 cup mixed nuts
2 tbsp almond flour
2 tbsp chia seeds
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
2 tbsp cacao powder
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch sea salt
White chocolate
85g cacao butter
60g whole milk powder
1/4 cup of stevia powder or the equivalent stevia drops
2 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp vanilla paste
a pinch of sea salt
1 tbsp dried berries optional
METHOD
To make the bliss balls add all the ingredients to a processor and blitz together until combined and clumping together as a tacky mass.
Break off little pieces and roll them into balls, pop them on a plate and in to the fridge to set while you make the white chocolate.
For the chocolate, add the stevia powder (not the stevia drops if using them!) and the milk powder to a processor and blend until a fine powder.
Next fill a saucepan with a couple of inches of water and bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer. Place a heat proof bowl on top of the pan. The bowl should be large enough to sit on top the pan without having contact with the water, but small enough that the base surface area is getting an even amount of heat. It’s important that no water gets in to the bowl as this will spoil the chocolate.
When the cacao butter has melted remove the bowl from the pan and pour in to a blender, add the combined stevia and milk powder (or the stevia drops if using them) along with the vanilla, salt and melted coconut oil. Blitz together until a nice silky texture.
Remove the bliss balls from the fridge and dunk each one in to the white chocolate until fully coated and place on a grease proof lined tray. When all done, place in the fridge for 30 minutes or until the chocolate has set.
NB - if you’re making the chocolate to eat as is, when all the ingredients have been blitzed in tp a smooth mixture pour it in to silicone moulds if you have them. If not you can improvise by pouring the mixture on to a grease proof lined baking tray. Pop in the fridge for 30 minutes until solid.
If you would like to kick the sugar habit then why not join my 21 Day Sugar Detox Program. Hundreds of people have already broken their sugar addiction cycle on my program and you can too! You can find more info here.
Find out about all the benefits of cutting down on sugar in the video below.