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
- 2/3 cup cocoa powder
- ½ tsp 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
Nutrition
Supplies Needed to Make your own Chocolate Chips
Nutritional Disclaimer
Please note that I am not a medical or nutritional professional. I am simply recounting and sharing my own experiences on this blog. Nothing I express here should be taken as medical advice and you should consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program. I provide nutritional information for my recipes simply as a courtesy to my readers. It is calculated using MacGourmet software and I remove erythritol from the final carb count and net carb count, as it does not affect my own blood glucose levels. I do my best to be as accurate as possible but you should independently calculate nutritional information on your own before relying on them. I expressly disclaim any and all liability of any kind with respect to any act or omission wholly or in part in reliance on anything contained in this website.
Free Bonus: Secrets to Keto Baking!
Sign up for your favorite recipes delivered straight to your inbox plus get our FREE bonus: Secrets to Keto Baking!
How do you store this? Fridge or room temp?
You can store them at room temp for a few days, but if they will be around longer than that, store them in the freezer.
Reading this as part of your 2014 Best Recipes. Thank YOU!!!! I am so happy I want to cry. I live with a cane sugar food sensitivity and recently learned that the sugar in the 86% Dark Chocolate I was eating was causing havoc in my system (major hair loss) 🙁 Been chocolate free now since Halloween. I am ordering my Cocoa Butter today! Cannot WAIT to try!!
Oh no, what a terrible sensitivity! Cane sugar is in practically everything! Hope the Swerve and stevia work for you. This is like really good, really dark chocolate. Yum!
Just made these for my holiday baking. They worked beautifully! The chunks held up in my cookies. So glad I found your site. My only substitution was powdered Whey Low.
So glad to hear it!
Is there anything I can use in place of powdered erythritol? It seems to have a lot of carbs :/. I’m not sure I like that.Is it possible to use a no-carb liquid sweetener? or Will that mess with chocolate chips?
Erythritol technically contains carbs, but it has zero effect on mot people’s blood sugar so it counts as zero net carbs. I have tested this on myself (pre-diabetic) over and over. I am a believer. So sure, you can try whatever sweetener you like but I don’t think it will taste as good or have the right consistency.
Just made your recipe into chocolate bars and added chopped peanuts. Delicious! This is the best low-carb chocolate Recipe I have made. The recipe made 8 chocolate bars, and with the addition of 2 ounces of peanuts, each bar was 116 calories, 9carbs, and 5 grams fiber. Therefore, net carb count was 4 per bar. A great evening treat!
Good stuff! Glad to hear they worked out for you.
Have you ever made white chocolate? I am new at all this so I don’t even know how one would even attempt to make that! I can NEVER find sugar free white chocolates for baking and I don’t like milk/dark chocolate (shocking, I know!). Do you have any suggestions on where to get sugar free white chocolate? Thanks!
I have made something that is a decent replacement for white chocolate. I am working on perfecting it, but check out what I did in this recipe: https://alldayidreamaboutfood.com/2012/07/white-chocolate-macadamia-nut-scones-low-carb-and-gluten-free.html
Can I use these chocolate chips in the cookies recipe? I want to make low carb chunky chocolate chip cookies.
You sure can! They will melt a little more than typical chocolate chunks, but they don’t run all over the place and you get some nice chunks of chocolate.
I keep using xylitol because we tolerate it well and it’s cheaper. Even though it does raise blood sugar levels, it is minimal so I figure it’s an ok compromise. I have melted down baking chocolate and sweetened it with xylitol but haven’t used it to bake because one recipe I read pointed out that it will melt and run all over the place but still have good flavor (in something like chocolate chip cookies). My kids don’t need any help making chocolate messy! Recently, I’ve been making coconut oil candies that I sweeten with a simple syrup made with xylitol. Since it’s made with cocoa powder it doesn’t seize. We can leave it out of the fridge for 10-15 mins before we need to chill it again. I’ve also mixed in shredded coconut and just poured it in a dish and cut it into squares or eaten it with a spoon at room temperature. That’s great for satisfying the need for a sweet treat but I love the idea of cocoa butter to firm up the chocolate so you can bake with it and eat it at room temperature. I think those benefits might make it easy to live with a little crunch from the sweetener. Going to order some cocoa butter now!
I live in Beijing and absolutely love your site and recommend it to anyone who will listen! Living gf and low-carb in Beijing is sooo much easier with you in this world!! Now…. apologies in advance for what made be a ‘stupid’ question!
I have brought a lot of my gf baking goods over from the States, but I didn’t bring powdered erythritol with me and can’t find it here! I have granulated stevia and can get granulated erythritol online here, but having not made chocolate before I am not sure if the sweetner must be powdered?
Powdered would be best but if you can’t get it, you can used the granulated. Your end result will be grittier. Can you grind the granulated in a coffee grinder or something? It won’t be ideal but it would help some.
Quick question… I don’t have any unsweetened chocolate in the house (and I’m having issues finding good stuff here in the UK)
Can I just sub the classic 3 TBS cocoa powder + 1 TBS oil per ounce of Unsweetened chocolate needed? Or will that mess with the consistency?
I don’t know for sure but I think you should try it. And for better flavour, go with coconut oil if you have any. If the end result is too soft, keep it in the freezer or fridge, and it will still be delicious!
Way to persevere Carolyn! 🙂 This is super impressive – I’ve never seen someone make their own low carb chocolate chips but it makes complete sense! 🙂 Nice job! Pinning this for later 😉 Thank you!
Sounds good! You can get sunflower lecithin at Whole Foods sometimes. I think I got mine on Natural Zing. A lot of the raw,organic vegan websites sell it.
Great recipe, Carolyn. Cocoa butter rules, doesn’t it? As you know (from my most recent post, I order Callebaut brand by the huge tub!). Developed my own version of sugar-free chocolate bars and I cannot wait to share all of my experiments, too. Pinning! xo
Hi, I wondered where and what brand of cocoa butter you used? Thanks!
I used Kakosi organic, I got it on Amazon. I like it because it comes in a bag and in smallish chunks so it’s not hard to weigh it out. You don’t have to chip it out of a container.
Bravo. Your experiments are wonderful!! Another terrific recipe from you again. We are4 so blessed to have your expertise. Thanks for helping all of us and sharing.
Carolyn – what other things will make it seize? I have tried making frostings with unsweetened chocolate and found that “Just Like Sugar” made it a goopy, thick mess, I was wondering about cream or milk powder, would that make it seize? Maybe it would make it smooth out a little and allay the graininess? I also have sunflower lecithin since I do not do soy. Perhaps that would help a little.
A little cream would absolutely make it seize as unsweetened chocolate doesn’t like liquid. You can rescue seized chocolate with a little heat (on low) and the addition of even more liquid, 1 tbsp at a time, stirring constantly. But then it’s quite soft so it wouldn’t work for chocolate bars or chocolate chips. And hey, where do you get sunflower lecithin…I’d really like to try that!!!
Carolyn – I get the sunflower lecithin here, as I try to avoid soy: http://www.shamansmarket.com/love-raw-foods-sunflower-lecithin-raw-16-oz.html?gdftrk=gdfV25511_a_7c1921_a_7c7153_a_7cbm05&gclid=CMOThbCqjrcCFYHc4AodBmYAPQ
Also, would milk powder make it seize, since it would not be a liquid? Thank you.
I don’t know but I find milk powder doesn’t dissolve well into the chocolate mixture and it ends up a bit grainy.
I wonder how you would make a homemade sugar free milk chocolate then? In any case, since we are mostly dark chocolate fans, I think I should just go with what works. Thank you for this recipe.
I am sure there is a good way to make milk chocolate when you have better equipment and can really work the sweetener and milk powder in!