1- Prepare your ingredients. Will you be using cocoa beans, cocoa nibs, or cocoa powder? If using Cocoa powder, skip to stage 5. For Cocoa beans, you will need about 1lb or 500g. Here you will need to lay the beans out flat and roast at about 120 degrees Celsius (150F) for roughly 20 minutes. You want the beans to crack but not burn. Keep a close eye on them. Once they crack, remove the husks by hitting them with a hammer. Blow away the husks with a hair dryer or by carefully blowing on them yourself. Use a juicer to grind down the nibs and to separate them from the remaining husks. You may need to run the husks through a second time in order to extract all of the cocoa liquor.   

2- Chocolate bars from Cocoa liquor. As it is difficult to determine how much liquor you will get from the original beans, it is best to consider quantities of other ingredients as proportions of the amount of cocoa liquor that you have extracted: 25% Cocoa butter (if you choose, you can soak a split vanilla pod in it for an hour before hand), 100% milk powder,  and 20-80% Caster (fine) sugar (depending on how sweet you want it), lecithin.

3- Smooth the chocolate. Mix the ingredients at heat (50 degrees centigrade), and then use a chocolate grinder. Keep the mixture soft by using a hair dryer for the first hour, until the mixture is smooth enough to be kept workable by the machine for a further 9 hours.

4- Temper the chocolate so that it doesn’t melt in your hands. Do not let any moisture into the mix during this process! Carefully melt the chocolate to about 50 degrees C in and bowl and then let it cool to around 38 degrees C. Pour about a third of the chocolate onto a non-porous surface and spread it out before working it back together with a spatula. Continue doing this until the mixture on the surface has cooled to about 30 degrees C, before adding another third to the surface. Repeat this process until all of the chocolate is out on the surface and has been cooled to 30 degrees C. Return the chocolate to the bowl and stir it gently without creating bubbles. Keep it below 32 degrees C.

4- Mould the chocolate at 30 degrees C/pour into the moulds. Leave to cool before placing in the fridge.

5- For making chocolate out of cocoa powder, you will need: 2 cups cocoa powder, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/2 cup icing/powdered sugar, 1 cup water, 3/4 cup soft unsalted butter, 1/4 cup flour, 2/3 cup milk.

6- Heat the water in a pot although keep it below boiling. Cream together the butter and powder until you have a smooth paste and then add it to the water. Sift the powdered sugar together with the flour into the hot mix and add the milk, blending until smooth. Pour into the moulds and allow the chocolate to cool before placing it in the fridge.

Tips

Making chocolate is messy so dress appropriately and remove anything nearby that you want to keep clean.

Never use regular food colouring with chocolate as the water in it will ruin the texture. Instead, use gels or powder.