Tag Archives: chocolate

Spicy chocolate chewy cookies – dairy free, gluten free goodness

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It’s grey and windy here in the UK at the moment (well it is where I live!) so it just makes me want to have lots of warming, spicy foods and we all know how well chilli and chocolate go together so I thought it was time I wheeled out this recipe. I actually made these ages ago but just never got the chance to post the recipe. It’s modified from the amazing Isa Chandra’s recipe

1/2 cup Almond oil

1 cup Raw unrefined coconut palm sugar

1/4 cup Maple syrup

3 tbsp Almond or Soya milk

2 tsp Vanilla extract

1 and 2/3 cup Spelt or gluten free flour blend

1/2 Raw cacao powder

1/2 tsp Cinnamon

1/2 tsp Cayenne pepper

1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp Himalayan rock salt

For the topping:

1/3 cup Raw golden caster sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease and line a baking tray (or 2!).

Put the oil, sugar, maple syrup and milk in a bowl and mix together using a fork. Add in the vanilla extract and mix well. Mix the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl and sieve in to the wet ingredients. Mix until you have a dough. The dough will be quite moist and sticky.

Put the topping ingredients on a plate and mix together.

Take small, walnut sized, balls of the dough and pat into the topping sugar to make discs about 2 inches across. Make sure they are well covered in sugar. Put them on to the baking tray with the sugar facing up. Cook for 10 – 12 minutes until they are crackly on the top and have spread a little. Allow to cool on the baking tray for 5 mins then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Enjoy! 🙂

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Super healthy chocolately goodness – dairy free, sugar free just not actually free!

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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 🙂

Chocolate week! the healthy (healthier) way… :)

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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! 🙂

Chocolate Buckwheat Crispies – gluten and dairy free

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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!

🙂

Concious Chocolate – chocolate that’s easy on the conscience! :)

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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!) 🙂

Rawr chocolate – simply divine!

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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/

Raw gluten free, dairy free chili chocolates

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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!

Chunky Cherry Chocolate Mini Loaves

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This is another one of Isa’s recipes – it sounded so good I just had to try it and it definitely doesn’t disappoint! You don’t have to use mini-loaf tins for this, you could just use muffin tins but loaves taste better for some reason! You can get the tins here.

I won’t waste anymore time talking about these – just get stuck in! 🙂

1/2 cup Apple puree

1/4 cup Almond butter

1/3 cup Cocoa powder

1/3 cup Almond milk/soya milk/any non-dairy milk

1/3 cup + 2 tbsp boiling water

3/4 cup Coconut palm sugar/ unrefined raw sugar

1 tsp Vanilla extract

1 tsp Chocolate extract (if you don’t have this then use another tsp vanilla extract)

1/8 tsp Almond extract

1 1/2 cups Gluten-free flour mix (or spelt flour if you’re not worried about gluten-free)

3/4 tsp Bicarbonate soda

3/4 tsp Himalayan rock salt

4 oz Chocolate chopped into chunks (use vegan chocolate if you want to keep this dairy free – my favourite vegan recommends green and black’s)

1 cup chopped Sweet cherries

Preheat oven to 175 C and boil the kettle (no, not for tea – though that wouldn’t hurt!).

Put the apple, almond butter, milk and cocoa powder in a mixing bowl. Add 1/3 cup boiling water and mix quickly with a fork to make a thick chocolate sauce. Add the sugar and extracts and mix well. Sieve half the flour, bicarbonate soda and salt into the mix and mix gently. Add 1 tbsp boiling water and mix again. Add the rest of the flour mixture and another tbsp boiling water and stir until smooth. Go gently – don’t over mix. Finally add the chocolate chunks and cherries and fold in to the mixture.

Pour into the tins (this recipe will give approx 8 – 9 tins) and put in the oven for 25 – 30 mins.

Fresh out the oven

Check they’re done by sticking a skewer in the centre, if it comes out clean they’re done (bear in mind you may hit a cherry or chocolate when you do this so you’re looking for a lack of cake dough on the skewer – chocolate or cherry juice is fine!). Allow to cool in the tins for 10 mins then take out of the tins and cool on a wire rack. They really need to be eaten warm so the chocolate is all melty! 🙂 Yum Yum Yum! 🙂

 

Munchie buster! Raw Cocoa-orange balls!

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These are a perfect snack if you want something chocolatey but a little more filling. You can use orange zest or natural orange flavouring – whichever (or both if you like it really orangey). You can also leave out the orange altogether and just have them plain chocolate. They are around 158 cals per ball, but it very much depends how large you make them of course! This recipe makes approx ten.

IMG_7965

You will need:

175g cashews

200g Medjool dates, pitted

20g rasins

30g cocoa powder (plus a little extra for rolling)

Zest of 1 orange or natural orange flavouring 

Pop the cashews food processor and pulse until they’re in small pieces.

Add the rest of the ingredients to the processor and pulse until you have a sticky dough. 

It’s very sticky at the moment so scoop it out into some cling film and pop in the freezer for around 20 mins. 

Once it’s a little firmer, remove and roll into small balls. Roll the balls in cocoa powder and then store in the fridge in an airtight container. 

Enjoy 🙂

xx

Raw chocolate truffles! :)

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As it’s valentine’s day I just had to give this recipe for raw chocolate truffles a try. I modified the recipe a bit – I subsituted the honey in the original recipe with Agave and because they tasted a bit sweet to me I added in a tablespoon of carob powder too. They’re not half bad for a healthy truffle and very easy to make!

a perfect post dinner treat

This will make loads! I cut the ingredients down by a third and it made 10 decent sized truffles, but I’ve put the original amounts here so you can decide for yourselves how many to make! 🙂

3/4 cup Raw Cacao Powder

2 cups of Ground Almonds

1/2 cup Agave Syrup

3 tbsp Carob Powder

1 tbsp Coconut oil

Dessicated coconut for rolling

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. If the coconut oil is too solid you may need to soften it first in the microwave. Once combined roll into truffles and roll in dessicated coconut. They can be eaten immediately but are best if chilled first – either in the freezer or fridge for as long as you can wait! 🙂