Making sugar-free chocolate chips is surprisingly easy and takes only simple 5 ingredients. Make these homemade chocolate chips for a great low carb and dairy-free option! Great in all your keto cookies, cakes, and sweet treats. Instructional video included.
If you think you might have seen these before, you have. I’ve done homemade sugar-free chocolate chips before, but this version is better and holds up to all of your low carb baking. They hold their shape perfectly and they have a deep rich semi-sweet chocolate flavor. And they honestly take only a few minutes to whip up.
While there are several good brands of sugar-free chocolate chips on the market, they can be prohibitively expensive. I love Lily’s chocolate chips but I find myself balking at $7.49 a bag. They also aren’t dairy-free and they contain a little soy, which many people don’t like. As a reader recently asked me about whether I had a decent homemade alternative, I decided I had to take matters into my own hands. I can honestly say that I have made vast strides in low carb cooking and baking in the past few years and very often my experiments lead me to new discoveries about how certain ingredients behave. I find myself storing up these little tidbits in my brain for future use. And when the time is right, a whole new idea takes shape in my brain and I can hardly wait to test it out.
How to Make Sugar-Free Chocolate Chips
The last time I made chocolate chips, I made them with butter. They were good, to be sure, but definitely a little on the soft side and they needed to be stored in the fridge and then added to the recipe just prior to baking. And although delicious, they didn’t quite live up to that true chocolate-chip flavour I had in my mind. Still, they were a good approximation and I was satisfied. But since that time, I have been playing around with other ingredients in some recipes, including cocoa butter. Unlike butter or coconut oil, cocoa butter stays solid at room temperature and it takes a fair bit of work to make it melt. For a bar of chocolate or a chocolate chip, this is an excellent quality indeed.
I also made sure to thoroughly sift both the powdered Swerve and cocoa powder before adding it to the melted chocolate mixture. This made a significant difference to the end result and the chips were much less grainy. To really sift out all the lumps, simply set a bowl below a fine mesh sieve. Measure your sweetener or cocoa powder into the bowl and use a spoon to stir it around and scrape it through the holes in the sieve.
And now that someone has come along and invented chocolate chip molds, we can even make them chocolate chip shaped! Wooohooo! Heretofore, I had always simply poured the chocolate mixture into chocolate bar molds and then chopped them, making them into low carb chocolate chunks rather than chips. I have also use these honeycomb silicon trivets, which work well and give them a very distinct shape. You can even simply pour the whole mixture into a parchment lined pan and chop them up from there. But obviously the chip mold is fun to have and they look just like the real thing.
Any way you make them, these sugar-free chocolate chips were a huge success. They blew my original attempts out of the water. First, they firmed up perfectly and I found that they didn’t need to be refrigerated after the initial chilling to stay firm. Secondly, they tasted like REAL chocolate. And why shouldn’t they? REAL chocolate is made with cocoa butter and is part of what gives it the deep, intense chocolate flavour. I had a hard time saving any of my first batch for baking with, because I just kept eating a little handful here and a little handful there as I passed through the kitchen.
And these homemade sugar free chocolate chips bake well too, I am pleased to say. I added them to some brownies, and I also baked them up in my Keto Double Chocolate Muffins. They held their shape nicely and didn’t totally liquify and run all over the pan, as I feared they might. They certainly held up about as well as any bar of chopped dark chocolate I’ve ever used.
The low carb chocolate chips melt perfectly into sugar free desserts like my keto chocolate chip cookies and Chocolate Chip Cloud Cookies, and I bet they would be delicious in Kalyn’s flourless low sugar peanut butter chocolate cookies too.
Tips for homemade chocolate chips
- Melt the cocoa butter and unsweetened chocolate in a double boiler. If they are over direct heat, they are more likely to seize.
- Use quality unsweetened chocolate such as Ghirardelli or Scharffenberger. Cheap bakers chocolate tends to seize more and will have a grittier texture.
- Sift your powdered sweetener and your cocoa powder to get out all the lumps.
- Use chocolate chip molds, silicone trivets, or any chocolate mold to shape your chocolate. Be sure to refrigerate until completely firm. After that, they won’t need to stay in the freezer or the fridge.
Sugar-Free Chocolate Chips
Ingredients
- 3 oz cocoa butter
- 2 oz unsweetened chocolate chopped
- ½ cup powdered Swerve Sweetener sifted
- ⅔ cup cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- In a heavy saucepan over low heat, melt the cocoa butter and chocolate together until smooth.
- Stir in the sifted powdered erythritol, then stir in the cocoa powder, until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.
- Pour into chocolate molds or spread in an 8x8 pan lined with parchment paper.
- Refrigerate until set, then remove from the molds or chop into small chunks.
Video
Anna V says
This is a great recipe, however the melted chocolate tasted bitter. I used 100% organic dark chocolate. Is that the correct chocolate to use? How can I avoid it tasting so bitter?
Sifting the chocolate powder and the powdered sweetener makes a big difference.
Thanks very much.
Anna
Carolyn says
100% cacao chocolate is unsweetened. Don’t taste it on its own, it contains NO sweetener at all.
Julie C says
This is an AWESOME recipe!!! I have used this to dip strawberries in! So good. I was wondering, is there a way to make it more milk chocolate? My kids say that it’s too much like dark chocolate so they don’t like it as much.
Thanks again! Julie
GS says
Adding actual cream with its water content will make the chocolate seize, so add in coffee creamer (e.g. Coffee Mate) as a substitute. Start with half or 2/3rds of the amount of cocoa, and adjust up or down depending on how you like the creaminess of the chocolate.
The powder creamer will have carbs — it’s not like you expect milk chocolate to have fewer carbs than dark, right? 😉 — so naturally look for one with the least. Coffee Mate is 1 carb per teaspoon, so e.g. 18 carbs if you add 6 tablespoons.
If you want the chocolate sweeter as well, you can just add more sweetener.
And if you don’t want to pay the exorbitant price for cacao butter, you can do what the “chocolate candy” companies do: substitute vegetable shortening. You just need a fat that’s solid at room temp — which is why butter is problematic.
Missy says
Add Whip cream powder from Anthonys. I have used 1tsp at a time to lighten up the chocolate 🍫.
Kelly mac says
Have been making this recipe for years so time to say THANK YOU!! Thought I’d share that most times (unless I am out and need them for something) I don’t bother with the chip molds. I pour the chocolate out on parchment lined baking sheets and top with walnuts, unsweetened cocoa or whatever else I’m feeling. Stick in the fridge and in an hour or so, brwK it up for worlda best sugar free chocolate bark. Thanks again. Your recipes are the best!!!