Chocolate Pots of Gold

*This is a repost from last Valentine's Day and I'm so excited to be making this AGAIN this week!*

I've been working out this week and hope to God I can stand and stir for as long as I need to when making this as my arms are like JELLY ... 9 Rounds is the place I've been after work. 30 minutes, full on cardio/muscle confusion with bags, dumbbells, kettlebells and medicine balls. I have a love hate relationship with the place but for 30 minutes I am huffing, puffing, sweating and hyperventilating ... and I feel great! It's actually motivating me to be more conscientious in EVERYTHING I do, from my water intake to food intake to what I'm doing during my "down time".  I boxed about 5, 6 years ago and loved it then and was in the best shape of my life and have not been able to find another place that had a great workout like that ... this place is FINALLY it! For those of you who are giving reasons for NOT working out (I'm one of them), just go. Do it. Take your first class (wherever you want to go!) and realize afterwards that dang, I really need to JUST DO IT. Nike is on to something! I was the first one to say: oh, I need to lose a few pounds. Need to get a little stronger first. Need to find new work out clothes that hide that fluff in the middle. Need to wait til my hair needs washed. SO MANY EXCUSES for NOTHING! Just do it!   

Any way.

I had this recipe tagged in my cookbook since Christmas morning ... and then I got the weekly email update from Michelle and said, heck, I should try this ... so I rooted around in my chocolate stash and had exactly 6 1.2 ounce bars of bittersweet 72% cocoa bars ... score! That made everything I needed available in house which made me decide that I needed to make it right then and there!!

The original recipe is in the cookbook ... and also on the website. And of course, as always, I modified to suit my needs and what we had on hand!

It was a little time consuming in the beginning ... I stirred and stirred and stirred for 45 minutes til my sauce was thick ... uggg. I was worried about heating the mixture TOO quickly and had the heat set a tad too low and the mixture was not heating up at all ;-) .... so medium low heat is NOT low heat ... just saying!

Ok, here's what I used to make these little Pots of Chocolate Gold ...

1 can of lite coconut milk. CAN, not carton.
2 large egg yolks
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/8 tsp salt
cinnamon stick
7 ounces dark chocolate (make sure its a minimum of 70% cocoa)
1 tbs vanilla
whipped cream and cinnamon for garnish (if you want to stay dairy free, you can make coconut whipped cream, Michelle has a recipe on her site...I opted for regular since I had whipping cream and no full fat coconut milk)

Take your chocolate bars and cut them up. Well, actually, slice them thinly. You don't want big chunks because we are going to attempt to melt the chocolate without having to stir too much ... you'll see what I mean soon enough. Take my advice and put the cut/sliced chocolate in a 4 cup or larger glass measuring cup, top the glass/bowl with a fine mesh strainer and set aside.

Whisk the coconut milk, egg yolks, salt, cinnamon stick and chili powder in saucepan to mix well.  Turn heat on to medium low. Not medium, not low. Medium low.

Grab your wooden spoon and start stirring. And stirring. And stirring. This should really only take about 15 minutes, give or take 5.  You want to stir until the yolks have cooked and the coconut milk has thickened enough to coat the back of your wooden spoon. Heat it too quickly and you will have scrambled eggs and lumpy coconut milk, so slow and steady is the gameplan, ok?

Once you've reached the right consistency, remove the pan from the heat and grab a mesh strainer and place that over chocolate bowl. Pour the mixture through the strainer, shake out and toss the cinnamon stick and go throw a load of laundry in the dryer.

You need to leave the stuff alone so the hot mixture can melt the chocolate, undisturbed. Honestly, I kept looking at it and wanted to poke around to speed it up a little, or just mix it up ... just. because. So, go ahead, walk out of the kitchen and take care of some non kitchen chore ....

So. When 10 minutes have gone by, come on back to the kitchen. Grab a rubber spatula and stir gently, almost as if you are folding the ingredients together. You want to be gentle so as not to chill the mixture too quickly as you want all that good chocolaty stuff to melt and incorporate with the cream mixture.  Once it's all stirred together, stir in your vanilla.

Here's where you will be thankful if followed my lead and used a 4 cup glass measuring glass to put your chocolate in.

Take 6 2 ounce jars or cups (I used some cute little canning jars) and pour the mixture slowly in to each jar.  Allow to cool and then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 4 hours or so.

When ready to serve, whip up a quick batch of whipped cream (just a little cream and a dash of sugar whipped with a hand mixer), top the chocolate with a little whipped cream and sprinkle with cinnamon.  *To keep this completely dairy free, make up a batch of whipped coconut cream instead ... I have yet to try it but I hear it's a fairly suitable substitute for the whipped cream*

Yummm. This is super rich but O M G, delicious!!!!  I could easily make this EVERY WEEKEND but that would become like some other things where we become obsessive and over do it ... so ... special treat only ... like Easter (6 weeks or so?), my birthday (3 months maybe?)  ... or, Mother's Day ...

Looking forward to sharing with some of these GREAT Parties ... go check them out!

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