Dragonfruit White Chocolate

I delayed this post because of White Chocolate Failure!

Have you ever wanted to make something for a holiday and taken the time to make it ahead of time so you could post it on your blog?

Here’s the beginning of the draft I started on February 10th:

“Do you want something exotic to try for Valentine’s Day?
Imagine going to the tropics with your sweetie and…. you find some yummy dragonfruit!

Navitas Naturals recently sent me some samples to try.  I was excited to try their dehydrated dragonfruit.

Fresh dragonfruit is so beautiful!  It is actually a cactus fruit like the ones we find here in Texas.  The taste is very similar except you don’t have to remove any of the tiny hairs, like Texas cactus fruit. I’ve seen 2 varieties – white and magenta fleshed.  You can even use the outer leathery case as bowl for the moist and juicy inner fruit.

The black seeds are edible and remind me a lot of black sesame seeds you might find in some Asian sweets. According the the nutrition label on the Navitas Naturals bag, the dried dragonfruit is a good source of iron.  For a 1 ounce serving, you get 10% of needed iron a day.  It is also very high in magnesium.

If you are a foodie and follow beautiful food photography, you know Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple.  They grow the dragonfruit themselves.

Another one of my favorite places on the web to see beautiful dragonfruit photos is Serene’s Eat Your Rainbows.  Check out her Instagram feed with lots of colorful, vegan meals and her wonderful use of dragonfruit to add color.

So what did I make with my dragon fruit?  I wanted to highlight its beautiful hue and chewy texture.
I also wanted to make something fun that would make a fun gift or dessert for Valentine’s Day.”

Unfortunately the recipe I tried was an epic failure!
Do not try the recipe below. It wasted perfectly good CACAO BUTTER!
Here’s what I tried because it seemed to have healthier ingredients: 4 Ingredient White Chocolate 

The image used was not the chocolate they made…it is a stock photography photo.  Also notice that comments have been closed on the post.  Could it be that people had such horrible failures? I think the main problem was that coconut sugar mixed with vanilla extract does not dissolve in cacao butter and there is no added emulsifier to get it to blend.

Here are my sad little hearts and flowers.  They have a gooey coconut sugar bottom and a tasteless fatty top.

So because I was busy and also jaded, I had no time to research another recipe and buy more cacao butter, until last week.

Here is attempt part 2!

Grating Raw Cacao Butter from Artisana

Ingredients: Raw cacao butter, macadamia nuts, dragon fruit, goji berries, (maple sugar -did not use), stevia, vanilla powder

Dragonfruit & Goji Berry White Chocolate

It’s a combination of a few different recipes I saw online that use some kind of nuts in addition to the cacao butter.  I think the nuts help with emulsification and keep the sugar from separating.  I ground the mac nuts in my spice grinder until it was mac nut butter. I also used stevia powder instead of any sugar.  I was afraid the maple sugar would not dissolve.  I also used Madagascar Vanilla powder instead of vanilla extract.
I would say it turned out nicely but I am still going to tweek the recipe a bit. The dragonfruit and goji berries look beautiful against the creamy white background and give lots of antioxidants in the fatty substrate. 🙂 Luckily my V-day roses lasted long enough to make it into the picture.

Anyway, it’s another lesson to me that it’s better to find recipes from real blogs instead of blog aggregate sites.  I’m always going to look in the comments to see what problems other people have and find substitutions that work.  Like anything, don’t make assumptions!