I knew when I bought a bag of them that cacao nibs were a key ingredient of chocolate proper. I knew that if I had the right equipment, this technically meant that I could therefore make my own chocolate.

However, anyone who's ever taken so much as a cursory glance at my kitchen knows that "right equipment" isn't a particularly apt phrase for it, even when comparing it to ordinary kitchens. It has room for a refrigerator, a stove, a sink, and a floor. With a shoe horn and a lot of swearing, I managed to elbow in a dish rack (please don't say "dishwasher" -- it will only make me cry) and a microwave oven.

That's it. The coffee maker lives under the sink, and I haul it out on occasional Sundays. I make toast in the broiler rack, and if two things need baking at different temperatures, either one of them has to be made well in advance or the whole thing's off.

So if anyone was going to make chocolate in her kitchen, I didn't think it would be me.

However, the good people who wrote The Essence of Chocolate, a cookbook I will only stop adoring when I die, had more faith in my kitchen and abilities than I did. They have a whole little section about making one's own chocolate in one's own kitchen, and one day when I felt like taking a dare I tried it.

And you know what? It may not look like a glossy bar you'd buy at an upscale market, or even a downtown drugstore, but chocolate of my very own creation now exists. And if I can do it, you can.

First, get yourself some cacao nibs. Some health food stores now carry these, or you can order them online.

Then all you need is some granulated sugar, a coffee grinder (blade, not burr), and a source of heat, and you're set.

The book said to use two parts nibs and one part sugar. This book was written by, among other people, John Scharffenberger. I love his book and I love many of his company's products, but he makes a seriously strong chocolate. The first time I took a bite of a Scharffen Berger bittersweet bar, I wondered if people who wanted to become Navy Seals had to eat it without changing expression in order to pass their final exam. So I used a little more sugar.

I put the nibs and the sugar in my coffee grinder and ground them up, stopping now and then to stir them with a spoon to make sure that the cacao and sugar were being properly incorporated.

Then I put the resulting powdery mixture into a heavy-bottomed pot. You can also use a double boiler, or even the microwave. I tried all three, and the results were about the same. I am squeamish about using double boilers to melt chocolate, because although I know this is standard and protects the chocolate from getting burned, water vapor is the natural enemy of melting chocolate. I have found that as long as I'm watchful and keep the heat incredibly low, a heavy-bottomed pot works just as well.

Whichever method you use, stir it frequently and don't expect to be able to think about anything else for a few minutes.

My paste never melted, exactly. It just went from dry powder to something like damp sand -- the kind you can make perfect castles out of at the beach.

When this sandy paste had been heated a bit, it had enough body to stick together. I put it on a plate and formed it into a thick, rough square, then stuck it in the refrigerator to solidify. About half an hour after that, I had chocolate.

The book had warned me it wouldn't be smooth, and it wasn't. But there was something wonderful about its roughness. It tasted very real. This was chocolate, all right. Not candy. Not cute. Chocolate.

It isn't pretty, but I'm thinking of making small squares of it the next time I have someone over for dinner and offering it with the coffee as "artisan chocolate."