Continuing my chocolatey theme I thought today I’d leap in with my current favourite chocolate treat. I’ve shared this delight before but not in it’s chocolate form! This stuff is amazing and such a blessing for anyone trying to avoid dairy (for whatever reason) but still wanting something yoghurt/mousse-like in their diet.
It’s Coyo! the raw chocolate variety 🙂 It’s basically just coconut milk and raw chocolate! It’s great on it’s own or really good with some fresh berries 🙂
It’s “Chocolate week” this week apparently! Hurrah I hear you cry! 🙂
So in order to celebrate one of my favourite things I wanted to share some chocolatey goodness with you all. Sadly my kitchen is still in a state of disarray (tile dramas!) so I haven’t been able to create anything new but it offers the perfect chance to go back to some old favourites. So here, just for you all, are a few of my favourite chocolate creations:
These are naughty, but not too naughty…. They’re best served hot so the chocolate oozes out of them…. hmmmmmm
Chunky Cherry Chocolate Loaves 
This has to come a close second. It was originally featured on the fab Pure Form Fitness Kitchen blog and it’s the Ultimate Chocolate Dessert. The spelt chocolate brownies (which are also used for the valentine Brownie Love Bites) are, in my humble opinion, out of this world, especially with the sauce on it (which you can make thicker and as more of an icing if you choose….)
You can’t beat a bit of simplicity and these Raw Chilli Chocolates certainly fit the bill. They’re so easy and quick to make, full of antioxidants and simply divine!
Another recipe featured on Pure Form Fitness Kitchen, is my Chocolate Treat Bar. These are fab – full of goodness, full of chocolate but still healthy! These are my go to bar if I’ve had a big work out day or if I’m just having a chocolate craving! 100 times better than any pre-packaged cereal bar and you can use whatever seeds (or nuts) and dried fruit you like in them.
I’m going to leave it at that for now, before we all pass out from a chocolate induced high! But as it’s chocolate week ALL week I’m going to keep on posting a few more chocolatey delights as the week goes on so watch this space! 🙂
This will probably be my last ‘baking’ blog for a while as I’m now in Indonesia for 2 months working on my primate conservation project (to find out what I’m doing check out www.nancypriston.com). There may be some food posts but I definitely won’t be cake making! 🙂 I meant to post his before I left but ran out of time, so here goes!
I’ve been having a play with buckwheat lately! I haven’t had much success cooking it so was looking for other ways to use it. My friend Colette gave me a recipe for making buckwheat crunchies so I thought I’d use them in a chocolate-based snack recipe! I’m pleasantly surprised with the results! I’m still not too sure about the buckwheat but so far it’s the best I’ve come up with!
It’s fairly straightforward but first off you need to make your buckwheat crunchies. Purchase some raw buckwheat groats (grains/kernels/whatever they’re called!) from the local health food store. You need to soak these over night – use 3 times as much water as buckwheat. Rinse really well in the morning and drain. Then spread them out on greaseproof paper and either pop them in your dehydrator if you have one, or in the oven on low heat. They will need a couple of hours. When they’re done they will be crispy and crunchy.
You can eat these as they are (in fact I quite like them sprinkled on fruit and soya yoghurt for brekkie to give some crunch) but you can also use them to create these yummy chocolate treats!
I made two versions:
Chocolate topped crispie
1/2 cup Coconut butter (you need the proper butter, not the oil – you can get it here. Nb other brands call themselves butter but are actually the oil – you need one that uses the coconut flesh)
1/2 cup raw Cacao powder
2 cups Buckwheat crunchies
1/4 cup Cacao nibs
1/8 cup Chia seeds
squirt of Sweet freedom (adjust to taste)
For the topping:
equal quantities of cacao powder and coconut butter (to make enough to cover the crispies to whatever depth you want!)
squirt of sweet freedom (adjust to taste)
Gently melt the coconut butter in the microwave or in a pan until it is runny. Mix all the ingredients in together and stir well. Line a tin or tupperware box with greaseproof paper and push the mixture in to it to the desired thickness. Then in another bowl melt the coconut butter for the topping and mix with the cocoa powder and sweet freedom. Pour on to the top. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
Almond Cherry Chocolate Crunchies
1 cup Buckwheat crunchies
1 cup raw Cacao powder
1 cup soaked Almonds (soak in water for as long as you gave time for – ideally overnight)
1/2 – 1 cup Coconut butter (not oil)
1/4 Sweet freedom (or less – to taste)
2 tbsp Pure protein powder (vanilla)
1/2 cup dried Cherries/cranberries/goji berries
Once you have the buckwheat crunches and soaked almonds ready it only takes a few minutes to make these. First blitz the almonds in a food processor – just a few pulses to chop them up a bit and place to one side. Then gently melt the coconut butter and add the cacao powder and sweet freedom. Mix to a paste and stir in the protein powder, buckwheat and almonds, finally gently stir in whatever fruit you are using. Line a tin or tupperware box with greaseproof paper and push the mixture in to it to the desired thickness. If you find the mixture isn’t holding together melt a little more coconut butter and pour over the top. Chill for 30 mins then slice and enjoy!
🙂
Well I’ve been lucky enough to be sent some of Conscious’ fab raw chocolate products to review.
Conscious is a small UK company that makes handmade raw chocolate. They’re all organic, handmade and free from gluten, soya, dairy and refined sugars. They also happen to be delicious!
Raw chocolate has considerable health benefits as the cacao beans aren’t roasted so they retain more of the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and theobromine which make chocolate “good” for you. They only use agave syrup to sweeten them which is another bonus.
They have a range of different flavours but I was sent:
Plain
Pure – 65% cacao with vanilla
The nutty one – brazils, cashews, hazelnuts and walnuts
Chilli hot – cayenne pepper
Love Potion No. 9 – maca and essential oil of rose
Essential orange – essential oils of orange and tangerine
Wild at heart – maca, vanilla and wilde blue-green algae
Mint hint – essential oil of peppermint
The best thing about these bars is the texture – they’re so silky smooth and they just melt in the mouth. They’re more like a truffle in texture than a chocolate bar and they’re beautifully creamy and rich. They all taste amazing but my favourites were the essential orange and mint hint, closely followed by chilli hot. The pure and plain ones were very nice, and the nutty one had very generous chunks of nut in it which is always good. I’m not a huge fan of rose flavoured chocolate generally but this bar was actually ok. It wasn’t overly floral and the maca balanced out the flavour nicely. The wild at heart bar tasted very nice but I couldn’t really detect the blue-green algae (that may be a good thing!) so it’s presumably there as a health benefit that doesn’t impact on the flavour too much.
I gave my official taster, Colette some pieces for her and her hubby Rod to taste too and they were similarly impressed with it. I’ll let them tell you all what they thought of them themselves though 🙂
The really great thing about these bars is that they’re so rich you really don’t want to eat too much of them in one go. A few pieces after dinner is plenty. The fact that they’re free fom refined sugars as well is fab, so it means you can enjoy these treats even if you’re trying to control your sugar intake. They’re also suitable for diabetics which is handy.
You can get these from local health food shops of from Conscious direct. I highly recommend you treat yourself to a bar (or two!) 🙂
The lovely people over at Rawr sent me some of their delicious raw chocolate bars to review. I’ve had them a while but have been taking my time trying them as I really wanted to give them my full attention!
There are 6 flavours of bar, and they sent me 5 to taste (they also do a Heatwave chilli bar which sounds amazing!):
Rawr Purity – organic dark chocolate
Rawr 80% Intensity – organic intensely dark chocolate
Rawr Passion – organic chocolate with goji berries and vanilla
Rawr Zest – organic orange flavoured chocolate
Rawr After Dinner – organic mint flavoured chocolate
Right out the bag first impressions of these bars are fab. The packaging is really lovely, simple but beautiful. The bars are a really good size – a nice chunky slab of chocolate which is also a big plus! They are all raw, organic and use no refined sugars or fats so they’re as good a chocolate bar as you’re going to get! 🙂
The taste definitely lives up to the look. I can’t decide which my favourite is – it’s a toss up between the After Dinner mint one or the Zest orange one. I’m a massive fan of both mint and orange flavour chocolate so these were always likely to be my favourites. The mint one is really nice – the mint flavour isn’t overpowering but is enough to give you that lovely after dinner mint effect. Often I find mint flavoured raw products have that nasty fake mint flavour and I was worried that would be the case here but it’s not at all. It’s flavoured with organic mint oil and it’s very subtley done.
The zest bar is lovely and orangey, but again it’s not overpowering. You can still taste the flavour of the raw chocolate but you get a deliciously warming orange flavour coming through from the organic orange oil. This is perfect with a cup of tea in the afternoon and anyone out there who’s a fan of Terry’s chocolate oranges will love this – all the flavour without any of the nasty refined sugars and fake orange flavours! (and I’m saying that as a BIG terry’s chocolate orange fan so that says a lot!).
I was most intrigued by the Passion bar and a little unsure it would work. Goji berries are very much the super food of the moment and I guess I worried these were just thrown in there for effect, but to my surprise the flavours worked really well. The vanilla extract softens the taste and the tart chewiness of the goji berries is lovely. This is a much milder choc and would suit people who tend to prefer “milk” chocolate.
The two plain chocolates are both lovely. The Purity bar does what is says on the pack – a pure organic chocolate, rich, dark and delicious! The chocolate is lovely and creamy but still has that dark chocolate bite. The 80% Intensity bar is quite something! At first I wasn’t too sure about it but after a few bites I was hooked. It has cacao nibs in it which give it a lovely crunch and it is seriously intense! 🙂
So all in all these are delicious. You get a lot of choc for your buck and they are simply lovely. I’m looking forward to using them in some of my recipes soon 🙂 Do check them out – you can order online from their website: http://www.rawrchoc.com/
The Easter bunny was a bit late getting to my house this weekend but thankfully he did finally make it .. and look what he brought!
These are super easy and quick.
50g cacao butter
40g cacao powder
1 – 2 tbsp sweet freedom/ Agave (to taste)
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (or more to taste)
Melt the cacao butter and then stir in the rest of the ingredients. Pour into a silicone chocolate mould and leave in the fridge to set. For the eggs you need to do each half separately then use a bit of melted mixture to glue the set halves together. These chocs don’t do well at warm temperatures so store them in the fridge until ready to eat!
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