Have you ever tried making a homemade version of a candy bar? This was a first time for me!

I picked Almond Joys which is made of a sweetened coconut mixture and whole almonds, covered in melted chocolate. They are very similar to Mounds, but those do not have almonds. I chose almond joy because I had a lot of shredded coconut laying around my house.

The recipe I used is from Joy the Baker (link here). This was a relatively simple recipe to make because there are very few components and not a lot of cooking involved. So if you have a sweet tooth, I suggest you keep reading.

Like I mentioned, there are 3 main components to this candy bar.

1. Coconut mixture: unsweetened shredded coconut is mixed with sweet condensed milk, powdered sugar, vanilla and salt. It creates a delicious and gooey filling that was delicious on its own.
2. Toasted almonds: regular almonds are good but toasting them gives so much extra flavour and they become extra crunchy. The almond is a good break from the other sweet components too.
3. Chocolate: original almond joy is made with milk chocolate but this recipe (and my preference) uses semi-sweet. This also slightly cuts down the sweetness factor. You could even use bittersweet chocolate if you wanted to cut the sugar down more.

The only thing I have to say is that the chocolate coating was quite a messy process. I used a fork to hold the coconut log and then scooped the chocolate with a spoon to fully coat it. Some of the almonds were shifting out of place too which I tried my best to fix. I managed to get them all coated and some just turned out a little more rustic than the others.

These were such a good treat though. It was still quite on the sweet side, so you only need to have one to be satisfied. If you like coconut, I highly recommend you make these. I like to keep them in the freezer so that the chocolate coating is crunchy when you bite into it.