There are a lot of pure cacao chocolate products out there, some quite high-quality. But they’re quite expensive. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of crap out there. Chocolate beans that come from slave labor, too much sugar, weird additives… And if you’re looking to make chocolate, most people recommend getting cacao butter and cacao powder separately. They often call that “cacao,” but the commercial powders you can by are very frequently dutched (i.e., heated), or contain cadmium.

I make pure cacao chocolate buy buying nibs from Chocolate Alchemy. I blend a pound of nibs in a Vitamix until it becomes a sludgy paste. (It takes a while, and can be a bit finicky. Sometimes the Vitamix overheats).

I take the sludge and let it cool as a brick, like Keith’s cacao, or use a mold to turn them into bars.