The Crucial Step To Take Before Adding Instant Coffee To Melting Chocolate

If you love chocolate and you also love coffee, then you're already probably a fan of coffee-flavored chocolate. But what you might not know is how simple it is to make it at home. In fact, all you really need are chocolate chips (or any chocolate to melt) along with instant coffee.

You may be wondering if all you have to do is mix the instant coffee into the chocolate — the answer is yes, but there's a crucial step you have to take first. Because the instant coffee won't dissolve into the chocolate, you want to make sure that it's as fine as possible so that the granules aren't noticeable when you bite into the chocolate. One way to do this is to use a mortar and pestle — if you're unfamiliar with the mortar and pestle, you can read our guide on everything you need to know about it. But essentially, you place the instant coffee in the mortar (the bowl) and use the pestle (the grinding club) to grind it up finer. If you don't own a mortar and pestle, don't worry — there are other ways to make sure that the instant coffee is super fine. You can also grind it up using a food processor or, if you have one, a spice grinder.

Once the instant coffee is ground up nice and fine, you'll add it directly into the melted chocolate. From there, it's up to you how you would like to use this coffee-infused chocolate.

Once you've properly infused the finely ground instant coffee into the chocolate, it's time to decide what to do with the delicious treat. Of course, you can just make coffee-flavored chocolate pieces — after mixing the coffee into the chocolate, simply put small scoopfuls onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and pop in the fridge for a couple hours to harden.

However, you can also use the coffee-flavored chocolate for more complex desserts, such as chocolate truffles. For example, you can follow the instructions for Tasting Table's dark chocolate raspberry cheesecake truffles, which calls for melted chocolate so simply replace the regular melted chocolate with the coffee-infused version. Or, you could use it to make chocolate almond bark, which also calls for melted chocolate as the base — if you don't like almonds or don't want to mix almonds with a coffee flavor, you can leave them out and replace it with sprinkles or granola or just leave it plain. The coffee-flavored chocolate will also work well as the coating for chocolate dipped fruit, such as our black and white chocolate-covered strawberries.