Keto Sugar Free Chocolate Chips

It's so easy to make these delicious and easy homemade sugar free chocolate chips. They're perfect in low carb baking and a much cheaper alternative to store-bought keto chocolate chips.

From now on, I'll always have a jar of homemade sugar free chocolate chips in the larder. And when I get one of these urges to make my favourite low carb chocolate chip cookie recipe RIGHT NOW, I'm good to go!

Jump to:

• Sugar free chocolate chips options
• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Keto chocolate chips for baking
• Recipe Notes 
• Storage
• Recipes with sugar free chocolate chips 
• Recipe

Sugar free chocolate chips options

You could go for cacao nibs, or for keto friendly unsweetened chocolate and simply break it into pieces.

Or you can use a quality regular chocolate with a cocoa content of 90% such as Lindt. A whole bar of this chocolate (100g) clocks only 7 grams of sugar. It contains 10 squares, which makes it 0.7 grams of sugar per portion.

Then there is stevia-sweetened sugar free chocolate such as Lily's. Lily's is popular in the US and sells chocolate bars as well as chocolate baking chips. The only issue is that low carb chocolate brands are EXPENSIVE!

The regular semi sweet or dark chocolate chips you can buy in the baking sections of supermarkets have a high sugar content. I have never found one that has more than 70% cocoa solids. Remember that the remaining 30% will be sugar!

Also, beware of brands that call themselves sugar free, but sweeten chocolate with maltitol. This sugar alcohol has the highest glycemic index (35) of all sugar alcohols and will raise your insulin levels (1).

Ingredients

Here are the ingredients you'll need for homemade sugar free chocolate chips:

• Cacao butter - also called cocoa butter. It is the main ingredient of quality chocolate and firm at room temperature. It is a better and tastier option for homemade chocolate chips than coconut oil. Here is a great resource explaining why it's actually a superfood. I used this brand. In the US you can go for this brand.
• Unsweetened cocoa powder
• Powdered sweetener - Allulose is best, but erythritol based sweeteners work too. Or use stevia glycerite.

Instructions

This section contains step by step instructions and photos that show how to make this recipe. See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.

1.) Melt cacao butter in a frying pan.

2.) Add unsweetened cocoa powder and powdered sweetener. Stir until combined.

Top Tip: If you wish, add ¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract.

3.) Pour the melted sugar free chocolate onto the underside of a pyramid silicone baking mat. These mats are actually sold for fat-free roasting - if you place meat on top of the pyramids, the fat can run off and your meat gets crisp and browned all round.

4.) Using a spatula or a spoon, spread the chocolate evenly into the silicone mat and place it in the freezer for 5 minutes.

5.) Now release your cute little pyramid-shaped sugar free chocolate chips! They're ready to use in your favourite low carb recipes.

Keto chocolate chips for baking

Update June 2020: I now recommend altering the recipe a little if you want use the chocolate chips in keto baking, such as my keto chocolate chip cookies.

The reason is that the 3 ingredient chocolate chips with cacao butter become very liquid in the oven.

However, if you add a forth ingredient - cacao paste, sometimes also called cocoa mass  - they become as stable as the keto chocolate chips you can buy in the shops. This means they will melt, but turn into those lovely chocolate blobs we're looking for.

Cacao paste is basically ground up roasted cocoa beans. They are the dark brown buttons in the picture below.

Instead of using 50 grams of cacao butter, use 25g cacao butter and 25g cacao paste. Then, add your 2 tablespoon powdered sweetener and 1 ½ tablespoon of cocoa powder.

I decided to use only half the amount of cocoa powder in this altered version because the cacao mass already has a strong chocolate taste.

Here are the ingredients again:

• 0.9 oz / 25g cacao butter
• 0.9 0z / 25g cacao paste
• 2 tablespoon powdered sweetener
• 1 ½ tablespoon cocoa powder 

The method is the same - melt, spread onto the pyramid mat and cool until firm.

Recipe Notes 

If you don't have a pyramid silicone mat (or a silicone trivet), you could simply pour the sugar free chocolate onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper. After the chocolate has set, break it into pieces.

If you want to go the full nine yards, check out this chocolate chip mould which you can get on Amazon US! It creates the perfect chocolate chip shape.

For an even simpler version of the recipe you could use 100% unsweetened chocolate and sweeten it with powdered erythritol or allulose.

If you choose to do this, make sure you use quality chocolate such as Montezuma's (my go-to brand in the UK). Cheap chocolate has a tendency to seize and curdle if it's not heated VERY slowly.

Can I make homemade chocolate chips with coconut oil?

As mentioned above, I don't recommend swapping the cacao butter for coconut oil or adding any other ingredients such as butter and cream. Your chocolate will not be firm at room temperature and you'll have to store it in the fridge or freezer.

Which sweetener works best?

Important! This recipe works best with powdered sweetener. Granular sweetener is too heavy and will sink to the bottom, resulting in crunchy chocolate chips. You can blend granulated sweetener in a food processor to make powdered sweetener.

The best zero carb sweetener for this recipe is allulose. It melts like sugar and you won't have any issues with grittiness. Allulose is easy to get hold of in the US. It's not yet common in the UK and Europe, but you can get it via the website mydiet-shop.co.uk.

My go-to sweetener is still erythritol. I tolerate it well and don't mind the slight cooling taste it has. I like the blends that also contain a small amount of stevia and monk fruit (Try Lakanto or So Nourished!).

The one thing about erythritol is that is has a tendency to re-crystallise when it cools. This means you will have an ever-so-slight graininess in your keto chocolate chips.

This should be less noticeable if you use xylitol (be aware thought that it is highly toxic to dogs).

Storage

Store in a mason jar or airtight container for up to 3 months. Shelf-stable.

Option to store in the fridge or in the freezer.

Recipes with sugar free chocolate chips 

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Don't miss the handy video where I show how to make sugar free chocolate in three simple steps - you can make low carb chocolate bars, crunchy Keto chocolate bark by adding nuts or homemade low carb granola and, of course, sugar free chocolate chips!

Recipe

First published in October 2018, updated in June 2020.

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