Hi everyone! It’s now been just over 6 months since my commitment to ethically produced/Fairtrade chocolate and chocolate products (influenced by my reading of BITTER CHOCOLATE by Carol Off). Guess what? It’s been almost the easiest thing ever! Yes, there’s the odd occasion where, like one week and three weeks into my commitment, you find yourself at dinner parties where everyone is eating freshly baked brownies and homemade chocolate chip ice cream (I thought whyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!) but once you get into the swing of things, you can be the one taking chocolatey goodness to any party.

Turns out, once you start looking for ethically produced products, you realise they’ve been under your nose the whole time! After my first blog post, my old housemate told me there’s Fairtrade Cadbury’s Dairy Milk from South Africa in lots of stores here. I live in Malawi so no one outside of Africa should have any trouble! It’s amazing what you can do with a bar of Dairy Milk.

One of my favourite chocolate treats was Twix – which doesn’t have an ethical cousin here. I thought I’d miss this so much but apparently you can make it yourself??! What?! My partner gets a special mention here for telling me that it’s really just shortbread, caramel and chocolate coating, and two thumbs up for surprising me with my first batch of homemade Fairtrade “Twix”.

It’s easy to make yourself (and I’m no great baker!), delicious, perfect for Meat Free Monday, and you can jazz it up depending on the chocolate you use, or add raisins (as we do):


SHORTBREAD – Store bought or recipe below:
1.5 cups / 225g Corn Flour (I get Maizena brand here)
1.5 cups / 225g Flour
¾ cup Icing Sugar / 110g Castor Sugar
250g Soft Butter / Margarine

-Mix butter and sugar until creamy (I hand mix as electric mixer throws half my mixture out of the bowl).
-Sift both flours into the butter-sugar mix.
-Roll dough 1cm thick and cut shapes as desired.
-Bake 25-30 minutes at 180C (a great friend of mine taught me to reverse the position of the tray at the 12 minute mark – it’s worked for me so far).
-Let cool before adding the caramel.

CARAMEL

150g butter 

1/2 cup of sugar 

Apparently there’s caramel you can buy in the can and place in boiling water before opening the lid?? Or you can kick it old school, heating butter and sugar. The butter-sugar mix vastly differs for me, even using the same sugar! 

-Keep stirring in a shallow pan on a high flame/highest heat setting until you get a light brown colour and the caramel forms a delicious coat on the spoon. 

-Add a bit of water if necessary.

-Let cool for a few minutes before coating the shortbread. Refrigerate for at least an hour before adding the final chocolate coating.

CHOCOLATE COATING
2 bars of 180g Cadbury’s Fairtrade Dairy Milk (or any Fairtrade chocolate)

Break into small pieces in a bowl over a pot of of hot water, continuously stirring as the chocolate melts. Be careful not to keep over the water as its boiling so you don't end up with slightly caramelised chocolate. 

-Once melted, drizzle over caramel layer as much as desired. 

-Refrigerate for about 2 hours and enjoy!!!