Are you dairy-free, vegan, or paleo and love your chocolate? Easily make your own chocolate chips sans refined sugar and dairy!

Happy post Thanksgiving! I am writing this from my grandparent’s couch in Chicago right now 😀 I’ve finally had a normal night of sleep after being majorly jet-lagged for the past 2 weeks. It’s partially my fault because I’ve been letting myself go to bed at like 7 and inevitably waking up at 4. Thank you Vibe Israel!
Speaking of Israel. One of the things I was most excited to bring back was this vegan chocolate recipe! One of our day trips was learning how to make vegan desserts and the seminar we took was all about chocolate! I was super pumped because I normally buy the Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Dairy-Free Chocolate Chips, but making my own would be so much cooler (and healthier!).

We made these adorable little candies using vegan chocolate and I added pomegranate seeds and orange zest to mine. SO DELICIOUS. The original recipe called for unsweetened baking chocolate + cocoa butter + sweetener. I modified the recipe a wee bit (I used coconut butter instead of cocoa), but still turned out DELISH!
All you need is….
- 100% unsweetened baking chocolate
- coconut butter or cocoa butter <— either will work
- maple syrup

You’ll also need some sort of vessel to squeeze little dots of chocolate out to make your chips.
I found a ketchup bottle with a pointy tip and that did the trick! I suggest using a piping bag with a pointy tip like this one.
The baking chocolate I found at Target, but you can also order it online. The key is finding 100% UNSWEETENED so that there is no added crap in it 😀 That way you can add you own sweetener and flavor.

Once you combine everything together over low heat on the stove, you can transfer into your piping vessel and start squeezing away! My chips were more on the “mini” side, but you can make them as big as you want!

Best part is, they don’t have to be perfect! Nooo, no they don’t!
After you’ve piped all your chips, you can transfer the baking sheet right into the freezer for them to set.

And wam bam! You’ve got yourself creamy homemade chocolate chips made with NO dairy or refined sugar!
IT’S LIKE MAGIC.

HAPPY SUNDAY FRANDS! Enjoy your last day of November <—-er mer gerd.
Love chocolate chips? Here are some of my favorite FFF recipes with chocolate chips!
Sneaky Spinach Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ingredients
- 4 oz. 100% Unsweetened Baking Chocolate
- 3 tablespoons coconut butter or cocoa butter
- 3 tablespoons maple syrup
Instructions
- First, line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
- Next, place all ingredients in a small pot (this is important- put everything in at the same time!). Turn burner to low/medium heat. Stir continuously until everything is melted together.
- Using a spatula, transfer into your piping vessel. Pipe your vegan chocolate chips onto your baking sheets. I filled about 2 sheets.
- Then, transfer baking sheets into the freezer and let harden for about 30 minutes.
- The chips should easily remove off of the parchment paper. Store in a small, air-tight container in the freezer.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can you post the recipe again? I’ve made these so many times but never written it down bc I have this page bookmarked. When I came not his page yesterday to make them the recipe is gone!!! I remember it’s 8oz chocolate and I know I used 1/4 cup maple syrup but for the life of me I can’t remember how many ounces of cacao butter!!! PLEASE can you let me know how many ounces of cacao butter the recipe used to say? (I won’t ever use coconut butter, so only interested in the cacao butter measurement). I would appreciate it SOOOO much!!! This is the only recipe I can find using these ingredients. THANK YOU!!!!
Hi Angie — we found the recipe and re-added it! Thanks so much for calling it out 🙂
I don’t see a recipe on this page.
I am not sure if I am just missing it but I can’t seem to find the actual recipe or ratio anywhere on this page?
Thanks! I needed a milk free product for my nursing a baby daughter….daughter. It appears as though 3 month old Hazel does not like certain foods my daughter eats, dairy being one of them. I have made my own chocolate chips enough (with Stevia) that I actually purchased tiny little molds that work great! I’ll be making some chips for her since she can’t eat the lovely lemon bars I made for her from our organic lemons and home grown chicken eggs! The unsweetened cocoa you referenced is 100% cocao. It says produced in a facility that may contain milk. Pretty sure they clean the equipment so ridiculous someone criticized it as not being dairy free. I mean c’mon man!
This would be great and dairy free, if the bakers chocolate was dairy free, which it isnt. Every bakers chocolate I have found contains milk, or milk products, so sadly an inaccurate description of dairy free.
Hello, I found some dairy free chocolate that you can get in most stores. Here is the amazon link for it.
https://www.amazon.com/Bakers-Cacao-Unsweetened-Baking-Chocolate/dp/B00MS19PA0
It does say “May Contain Milk” but that’s for allergy reasons since it is most likely processed in a facility that also makes chocolate with milk in it.
My mixture came out really, really thick 😫. I’m just wondering if the amount of chocolate was why. I used 4oz. as specified but went by the package it came in, as it tells you exactly how much each square is in oz. I added more maple syrup, coconut butter and even coconut oil until I got a smooth texture to make it possible to use in the piping bag.
Could you tell me how you measured your chocolate? That’s the only thing I can think of that would have been the cause. As they came out great once I added the extra ingredients. I definitely love being able to make my own chocolate chips! Thank you so much for sharing!
Thank you for this recipe, will try using honey for sweetener because whenever I buy maple syrup it doesn’t even last a week!
Made these and they came out super delish! I halved the recipe and tried half with the cocoa butter and the other half with the coconut butter. Both were great! I like the texture of the coconut butter a little better, but the cocoa butter held the shape of the “drop” much better. The coconut butter ones ended up flattening into more of a disc-like shape. I let the chocolate cool for awhile before piping so not sure what I did wrong with that cause yours look great! Either way, this is a great recipe and love the ingredients!
Hi
Thank you. can I use coconut oil instead of coconut butter?
Enjoy Life has soy in it. So happy to come across this recipe. I was searching for a healthy chocolate chip to buy and couldn’t find one!!
This is great, I have been looking for a recipe for homemade dairy free chocolate with coconut butter and I found it! I”m just not sure I can get my hands on bakers chocolate, Do you think I can use Cacao powder? if so I wonder how much I should use .5 or 1 cup. What would you suggest? TIA
Hiya! I realize that I’m kind of late on this recipe but I’ve hard it bookmarked for the better part of a year, waiting for the occassion to make my own chips. I was wondering, can you bake with these chips once they’ve set in the freezer? I want to make black bean brownies and I thought it would be neat to include homemade chocolate chips. Any thoughts? Cheers!
-Phoenyx
You can totally make with these chips!
Eep! I made these and the chocolate was so runny it did not “ship” at all. I have the sheet in the fridge and I’m going to make it into chunks. I wonder what I got wrong?
Sounds delicious! Where do you typically buy the already made chocolate chips?
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU 🙂 I’ve been wanting to make my own chocolate chips for such a long time, this is a perfect healthy recipe and I’m so excited to try this. I have tons of virgin coconut oil and was wondering if I could substitute the coconut butter with the oil? Please say I can. I’ll never buy chips again as they never have the amount I need and also the Enjoy life ones are far too expensive for me.
Thanks in advance 🙂 x
The only thing about subbing for coconut oil is that they may melt at room temperature. If you store them in the freezer, I say that it will be fine!
Thank you for your reply 🙂 I see what you mean I might make my own coconut butter 🙂 do these chips hold there shape after baked in cookies ?
They did for me!!!
I made this recipe today, and it did not work – I used 99% Scarffenberger, cocoa butter, and palm sugar. It was totally liquid, had to put it in the freezer for a half hour to thicken. More to the point, they taste really awful – like 99% chocolate, basically. It appears it will take a lot more sugar to get it down to 75% from my hunting on chocolatier websites. Love this idea but will need a different recipe I think.
Hi Capucine! I’m so sorry you had issues with this recipe. It looks like you completely switched up the recipe. I used baking chocolate and maple syrup, where as you used Scarffenberger and palm sugar! I hope you can find another recipe that works for you!
Beautiful! Making my own semi-sweet chocolate from unsweetened is a project I’ve had in mind for a long time. Thanks for the nudge with this recipe featuring such cute little homemade chocolate chips!
Yes! This is a fun one 😀
We dont get any of the ingredients in here…..u think i can melt the choco bar and pipe it wid a piping bag?would it do?
You…are my hero. I am both a vegan and avoiding refined oils and sugars, so this recipe is seriously a dream come true. I was getting very sad without any chocolate.
I just tried these this evening, and they’re setting in the freezer right now. The chocolate didn’t get very melty so I’m a little worried they won’t turn out, but otherwise everything worked fine! I used an old mustard bottle to squeeze them out and it worked pretty well!
And either way I’m pretty sure they’ll be delicious, because I totally licked the pot and OMG!
Did you use coconut butter or cocoa butter?!?
I used coconut butter. It worked great!!
Awesome! I made the recipe again, too and it turned out awesome 😀
Just to make sure, when you say coconut butter you mean “butter” not “oil”, right?
Just wanted to make sure because some blogs flip flop the two as the same product or suggesting you could use any one…
BTW, any suggestion on brands??
Thanks!!
Yes! I used coconut butter…you can also use cocoa butter, which I know works really well too, but I actually really like a hint of coconut in my chocolate :D! The brand I use is Artisana!