Chili hot chocolates

Some like it hot! Especially when Roland was cooking up a storm of chiles that our friends over at Marx's Foods sent us to play with. It was 1 am on Thursday night and while I was scrambling to meet a deadline, he was making chili puree. Sneezing and typing on a computer don't go together very well, but oh was it worth it!

I cannot take credit for that laborious, sneeze inducing and fire breathing task. You need to be genetically related to a dragon to handle chiles with the precision that Roland has and it takes both bravery and experience that I am yet to master. Keep reading, I will send you to his blog when the time comes.

I am told that all you do is cut the tops off the chiles, shake the seeds out, then cook the flesh, blend it, push it through a sieve to make it finer and leave the hot sludge behind, obtaining a smooth, almost oily looking paste.

It's thicker than tomato paste, and it will invade every corner of your home with a potent smell. Something about the aroma of chili puree reminds me of hot concrete in the summer sun, dark chocolate, rum and black pepper, all rolled into one pervasive memory that I can't quite put my finger on.

But back to my chocolates. Homemade chocolate is something I love to indulge in. When your chocolate contains only the healthiest, life giving and energy boosting ingredients you can find, you don't need excuses to make it, but I always end up needing a really good reason to stop eating it. I try to put the chocolate making off to a day when we are going out, so that I can share it with friends and control the amounts, because I could literally inhale a whole batch. Homemade chocolate hijacks my self control, but luckily, there are always Samaritan chocolate lovers who are willing to rescue me.

To make 12 large Chili hot chocolates  you need:


1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cups honey
3 tbsp chili puree (here is the recipe)
1 ice tray (deep)

From here on it's embarrassingly simple. Over medium heat, melt the coconut and honey. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the natural cocoa powder. Once it's smooth it should be as runny as water - that just shows everything is ok. Fill up your ice cube trays (or chocolate molds) 4/5 of the way to the top. To place the chili puree filling inside, simply drop a 1/4 of a tbsp inside each chocolate compartment. The chili will naturally drop to the middle and the hot chocolate will seal up on top. You just learned how to put filling in your chocolates! Congratulations!

Place in the freezer for 1 hour, pop the chocolates out of the tray and enjoy. Remember to keep them in the fridge after, because unlike commercial chocolate, these will melt and make a mess!

Please enjoy responsibly, these are hard to resist after the first one! Let me know how yours turned out!