Quick answer: To make mushroom chocolate bars, temper good-quality chocolate (80–90% cacao) — melt it below 38°C (100°F) in a bain-marie, cool it to 24°C (76°F), then bring it back up to 30°C (86°F) — mix in about 10% powdered mushroom or mushroom extract, pour into molds, chill for 20 minutes, then cure overnight at room temperature. Weigh each bar so you know the dose. The method works for medicinal and magic mushrooms alike.
How to Make Mushroom Chocolate Bars
Mushroom chocolate is growing in popularity, and for good reasons! Mushroom chocolate tastes delicious, is super shelf stable, and is very easy to portion or dose anything else that’s inside, like your favorite mushrooms.
If you use high-quality cacao in your chocolate, which we definitely recommend, you’re also getting health benefits from this wonderful plant. Cacao is high in antioxidants, flavonoids, and essential vitamins and minerals, such as magnesium, iron, and calcium. Cacao supports heart health, and energetically is known as a heart opener.
Combining cacao with your favorite medicinal or magic mushrooms to make chocolate is a tasty way to support your body, mind, and soul!
By the end of this article, you will know how to make your own mushroom chocolate! You can start completely from scratch using a chocolate refiner, or we’ll also teach you a low-tech method if you just want to buy chocolate bars from a store and mix your preferred mushrooms with them.
👉 Do you learn better visually, we got you covered
Mushroom Chocolate Ingredients
Thank you to Maestro Chocolatiero, Paddy from Corazon de Cacao (Etsy shop here) for lending his expertise to this article and video!
Did you know that chocolate comes from the fruit of the cacao tree? The Mayans even used to use it as money — so back in the day, money did grow on trees!
Here’s a quick list of everything you need to make mushroom chocolate. Read on for more about proper sourcing and the process!
Everything you need to make mushroom chocolate:
- Chocolate refiner
- Cacao beans (dried, roasted, and peeled) OR high-quality chocolate bars that are 80-90% cacao
- Sugar of choice
- Powdered dry mushrooms/powdered mushroom extract
- Kitchen scale
- Spatula and spoon
- Bain-marie
- Bowls for water baths (bigger than bain-marie)
- Kitchen thermometer
- Chocolate bar mold or other container like Tupperware/baking dish
- Optional: Syringe
Sugar
We like to use panela! Panela is derived from cane sugar and is a less refined, less processed form of sugar. It’s rich in minerals and higher in fiber.
If you can’t find panela, the most important thing when making chocolate is that you use a dry ingredient — something like a muscovado sugar would be too wet, but almost any other type of sugar is acceptable, like white sugar, brown cane sugar, or coconut palm sugar.
Do not use maple syrup, honey, or agave nectar to make chocolate. Chocolate is a dry, stable product — and if that chocolate had moisture inside it, it would mold and decay.
Mushroom Powder
You will also need dried mushrooms to make into powder, or a dried mushroom extract powder.
PRO TIP: Certain mushrooms you can use dried, like Lion’s Mane, Cordyceps, or Psilocybe, because they don’t contain much chitin. If you want to make chocolate bars with mushrooms like Turkey Tail or Reishi, you will need a mushroom extract powder* instead of a direct mushroom powder. Otherwise there’s too much chitin, which will give you stomach aches.
*We at Fungi Academy personally use and recommend mushroom extract powder from SuperFeast! Use code FUNGIACADEMY for 10% off your order.
If you’re starting with whole dried mushrooms, make sure to powder them first before putting them in the chocolate refiner (more on that below).
How to Make Mushroom Chocolates from Scratch
Here’s an overview if you’re interested in making your own mushroom chocolate. Cacao and chocolate refiner machines are now available all over the world, so it’s super doable with a small investment to be making your own mushroom chocolate at home.
If you want the low-tech method of making chocolate, skip to the section below!
Mushroom Chocolate Recipe
- 75% cacao beans
- 15% panela or natural sugar
- 10% mushroom powder
3. Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie
Transfer the chocolate into a bain-marie and begin melting the chocolate. This can be done by holding the bain-marie over a pot of hot water on the stove and continuously stirring it until the chocolate is melted. IMPORTANT: Make sure the temperature always stays below 38°C (100°F).
4. Lower the temperature of the chocolate
Once the chocolate is melted, put the bain-marie inside a cold water bath and, with a rubber spatula, turn and fold and mix your chocolate. Stir and fold until it reaches 24°C (76°F).
5. Raise the temperature of the chocolate
Once the chocolate reaches 24°C (76°F), move the bain-marie to a warm water bath. You don’t want the water to be too hot — around 38 to 49°C (100 to 120°F) tops. Raise the chocolate to 30°C (86°F).
6. Mix in mushroom powder
Now you’re going to mix in your mushroom powder, constantly stirring and keeping a close eye on the temperature. It’s very important that you don’t go over 31°C (88°F), because if you do, you will melt the crystals that you’ve made.
7. Pour your chocolate into a mold
Remove the bain-marie from the water bath once the chocolate is 86° F and all the mushroom powder is mixed in evenly. Pour into molds, weighing on a kitchen scale for precision. Tap the mold on the table to settle any bubbles.
8. Put your chocolate in the fridge for 20 minutes
Set an alarm so you don’t forget to take it out!
9. Remove your chocolate from the fridge and let it sit at room temperature overnight
Chocolate should stay in the molds for 8-12 hours overnight at an ambient temperature of around 16 to 21°C (60 to 70°F). You’ll know the chocolate is ready when it falls out of the mold after a little wiggling on the sides.
How to Make Mushroom Chocolates: Low-Tech Method
Good news: you can make your own mushroom chocolate without a refiner! You can just buy some really good chocolate bars and the chocolate maker has already done the hard part for you.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you buy chocolate that is 80-90% cacao for this process. If you want really high-quality and ethical chocolate, we recommend the brand Corazon de Cacao — directly traded from Guatemala, ethically sourced, and with a massive positive impact for local communities.
Once you source your chocolate (skipping Steps 1 & 2 from the full instructions above), start at Step 3 — melting your chocolate.
A quick, honest word before you dose
Chocolate is the easiest way in the world to take a mushroom, and that’s exactly why dose matters so much. A bar tastes like dessert. It is very easy to eat dessert. So before we get into grams and percentages, two honest notes.
The legal one first. Medicinal mushrooms like Lion’s Mane, Reishi, and Cordyceps are food, legal pretty much everywhere. Magic mushrooms are a different story. Psilocybin is still illegal in most of the world. We’re not your lawyers. Know the laws where you live and make your own call. This is education, not a nudge.
The safety one second. With the mushrooms, the whole game is knowing your dose and respecting it. Start low. Set and setting aren’t optional. Don’t drive. If you’re on prescription meds, especially antidepressants, talk to a doctor first, because some combinations just flatten the experience and a few are genuinely risky. And label everything clearly, so a chocolate that looks like a treat never ends up in the wrong hands: kids, housemates, or future-you rummaging the fridge at 2am.
Right. Now let’s talk dose.
Knowing Your Dose
Chocolate is the best dosing vehicle there is, because you set the dose with a scale and a little math instead of a guess. Here’s the whole trick: decide how much dried mushroom you want in each piece, multiply by the number of pieces, and that’s how much powder you weigh into the batch. That’s it.
Medicinal mushrooms (the forgiving one)
For Lion’s Mane, Cordyceps, Reishi, and friends, dose is relaxed. Our recipe runs about 10% mushroom by mass, which is a generous daily amount and still tastes like chocolate.
| Ingredient | From scratch | Low-tech (finished bar) |
|---|---|---|
| Cacao / base | 75% | a finished 80-90% bar |
| Sugar | 15% | already in the bar |
| Mushroom powder or extract | 10% | 10% |
Worked example: a 50g bar at 10% holds 5g of mushroom powder. Split into 10 squares, that’s 0.5g a square. If you’re using an extract, follow the dose on the jar (usually 1 to 2g a day) and treat that as your per-serving target.
Magic mushrooms (where the math actually matters)
Do not use the 10% rule for psilocybin. 5g of dried Psilocybe in one bar isn’t a portion, it’s a heavy trip. For magic mushrooms you dose by grams of dried mushroom per piece, and you keep the pieces small and even.
Pick your per-piece target from the chart, then weigh that amount times the number of pieces into the batch. Say you want 1g per square and your mold makes 12 squares: weigh 12g of finely powdered dried mushroom into the batch and stir it in really evenly. Now each square is roughly a gram. Roughly, because chocolate never distributes perfectly, which is one more reason to keep doses modest and start with a single piece.
| Per piece | What it is |
|---|---|
| ~0.1g | Microdose, sub-perceptual (see our microdosing guide for protocols) |
| 0.25-0.5g | Light, a gentle lift, good for a first taste |
| 1-1.5g | Moderate, clearly psychedelic |
| 2-3g | Strong, a full journey, have a sitter |
| 3g+ | The deep end, only with experience and support |
One big caveat: potency varies a lot. Different species and even different flushes hit differently, and high-potency strains like Penis Envy can run two to three times stronger gram for gram. These numbers are a rough map for dried cubensis, not a promise. Start at the bottom of your range, give it time to come up before you reach for more, and remember you can always take more next time. You can’t take less once it’s in you.
Whatever you make, weigh it and label it: the date, the species, and the dose per piece. Future-you and anyone you share with will thank you.
Frequently asked questions
For medicinal mushrooms, about 10% by mass, so a 50g bar holds around 5g of powder. For magic mushrooms you dose by grams of dried mushroom per piece instead: weigh your per-piece target times the number of pieces into the batch, keep the pieces small and even, and start low.
Not if you keep it cool. Psilocybin breaks down under sustained high heat, which is one more reason this recipe never takes the chocolate above 31°C (88°F). Stay in the tempering range and your mushrooms keep their strength.
No. Fresh mushrooms are mostly water, and water wrecks chocolate: it seizes, molds, and spoils. Always dry and powder your mushrooms first. Dry weight is also the only way to dose accurately.
Properly tempered and stored cool, dry, and out of the light, it keeps for months, just like good chocolate. Label it with the date and the dose so you always know what you’re holding.
Usually fairly quickly. Because the mushrooms are ground to a fine powder and blended right into the chocolate, they absorb easily, so onset can come on a touch faster than chewing whole dried mushrooms. It still varies with your body and what’s in your stomach, so give it time before reaching for a second piece.
That’s your call, but make each piece small enough to titrate. Keeping pieces in the 0.25 to 1g (dried) range lets people find their level without overshooting. You can always eat a second one.
Keep Learning & Growing
Loved making this recipe? Here’s where to go next:
- Herbal Allies for Homemade Mushroom Medicine — level up your chocolates with plant medicine combinations for body, mind, and spirit.
- The Ultimate Lemon Tek Guide — another popular method for working with magic mushrooms safely and intentionally.
- Microdosing: The Ultimate Guide — if you’re making microdose chocolates, this guide covers protocols, dosing, and benefits.
- Lion’s Mane Mushroom — Complete Guide — one of the best medicinal mushrooms to add to your chocolates, covering benefits, growing, and dosing.
Want to grow your own mushrooms to put in your chocolates? Our Online Mushroom Cultivation Course teaches you everything from spore to harvest — gourmet and medicinal species included. Or join the Mushroom Membership for monthly live sessions, expert guests, and a global community of mushroom lovers who’d love to see your chocolate creations.
