Agave

Raw Chocolate Mousse

Since today is another snow day, I figured I would share one of my all time favorite recipes. I found this in the book Raw Food Real World by Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis. If you haven’t seen this book, here’s what it looks like so you can pick it up the next time you’re raw book shopping:

If you remember, a long time ago, I posted a picture of the Raw Food Real World Lasagne. It was amazing. If you want to take a trip back on memory lane, see my old father’s day dinner post!

But today is all about the chocolate mousse. If for no other reason, you’ll want to pick up the book just for this recipe!

Maybe it was the sex appeal that Sarma brings to the facing page that makes this just a pit more savory. I guess I also have a bit of a soft spot in my heart for fuzzy pink sweaters. But the pig tails?  Ah, no thanks.  J 

The hardest part about making this recipe is finding the Young Thai Coconuts. I’ve always got my eyes out for a sale, but that doesn’t seem to happen enough. This time, I found a few that looked good and healthy (See How to pick out a good coconut). The big surprise I had came when I opened them and found that there was lots of great coconut meat that I could make mousse with!  Thus, check out the picture in the measuring cup. I opened them earlier in the day, poured a little coconut water over them and wrapped them up so that it would be no problem when it came time to put it all together.

Notice the test-tube in the crease of the book. One change that I make in their recipe is that I use the scraping of one vanilla bean rather than the liquid vanilla extract. Yes, it’s more expensive, but you don’t get any chemical taste in the final spoon full.

And I love the fact that you just throw everything in the blender and whip it up!

The only thing you really have to look out for is getting coconut shell in the blender. Thus, when you remove the meat from the shell, look it over closely. I’ve missed some shell before and it totally ruins the emotional effect that this dessert lets you experience. You really don’t want to break up the bliss.

I’ve learned that a little goes a long way with this recipe.

I now pick out reasonably small containers to let it both set up in and serve in. These little ramekins work great.

I can’t wait for the next sale on Young Thai Coconuts just so I can make this dessert again!

Enjoy!

Raw Chocolate Dipped Truffles

Today, winter officially arrived with a morning rain and afternoon snowstorm. It was just above freezing, so what fell came down in large flakes and quickly covered everything. Fortunately the cloud only took an hour to pass by so the snowpack came in around a half inch. It’s beautiful to look at, but you don’t want to venture out.

Thus, it’s a great day to make truffles! … and eat them too!

A few days ago I went hunting for a really easy raw truffle recipe that would only take a half hour or so from start to finish. I looked around a bit, but didn’t find anything that caught my eye until I visited Lisa’s Raw on $10 a Day (or less!) blog. If you haven’t noticed, that blog has been linked in here for nearly a year! I love her commitment to the blog and how well she puts together the artwork. It’s just fun to read and beautiful to look at.

Yet, anyway, if you scroll back a bit in her blog, you’ll find that on the 2nd, the menu included a dessert – Double Chocolate Truffles! When I saw what she posted, I immediately new that I’d found the truffles I’d been looking for.

Today, everything came together in such a fine way that I got to make this recipe my own. And yes, they are as good as they look – but I couldn’t settle for just eight, so I kind of doubled the recipe. I wanted to give away a few and cut down on the chocolate just a little (I’m virtually out now, … need to visit Raw Vegan Source again). Too much raw chocolate will keep you up all night. So I almost doubled everything that Lisa shared with the world (except the cacao). Here is my version!

Recipe – Raw Chocolate Dipped Truffles:

Truffle balls:

  • 1 cup soaked (dried) raw almonds
  • ½ cup raisins
  • ½ cup (8) medjool dates (pitted)
  • 3 tablespoons cacao powder
  • Scrapings of the inside of one vanilla bean
  • Pinch salt

Chocolate Dip:

  • 4 Tablespoons melted raw coconut oil
  • 4 Tablespoons raw agave
  • 4 Tablespoons Raw cacao powder

Soak a bit more than a cup of almonds for 4-6 hours before starting. Rinse and dry completely so as to not add any water to the mixture (cacao and water don’t mix).

To make the balls, add the almonds, raisins, salt and scrapings from the inside of the vanilla bean into the food processor and grind up. After you’ve worked it a bit, add the dates. You’ll need to play with it a bit in order to really get it broken down nicely. Once it’s nice and smooth, roll into small truffles and place in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. You just want to get them cold, not frozen. Meanwhile, it gives you time to cleanup and put together the dip.

For the dip, add all three ingredients (oil, agave and cacao powder) and quickly mix. It doesn’t take much, but make sure you don’t have lumpy cacao. That makes mixing it up a little harder to do.

After the balls have cooled and your chocolate dip is ready, roll the bottom of the cold truffle through the melted chocolate and place it on parchment paper. The coconut oil should quickly firm up. It might take a couple more minutes in the freezer, but they’ll look like this:

And as you can see from the first picture (way above), I thoroughly enjoyed that treat! The ball is mildly sweet and a soft nutty chew. You have to hunt for the vanilla and the chocolate flavor is tame allowing you to actually discern the raisins. The Chocolate glaze is powerfully dark and rich. It makes you want to suck on it just a bit before chewing through the rest of it.

This is truly a winter time treat!

Oh, I never like throwing out anything – especially when it comes to raw chocolate!

I just happened to have a few soaked almonds left over that I rolled through the bowl that I used for dipping the truffles and I wound up with … turtles!

These were amazing too! These were the first things to disappear. There is something about sweet chocolate on almonds that I just can’t pass up. Now, if I’d just used cacao butter rather than coconut, these would have firmed up at room temperature. But no worries for they disappeared within about five minutes!

These truffles really did mix up fast with no fuss. I’d highly recommend them if you’ve got a craving!

Make and experience joy – these truffles just might help!

Raw Cantaloupe Sorbet

What a great way to finish a scorching hot weekend – fresh raw ice cold sorbet! And, seeing that we’re rounding out the last really nice days of the summer, the melons are sweet and plentiful. Thus, tonight, I whipped up some fresh raw cantaloupe sorbet.

If you’re not a big cantaloupe fan, there’s nothing about this sorbet that will make it less … well, … cantaloupe tasting. But, if you are a fan, this will be a summer treat unlike any other sorbet. There’s nothing like light, fluffy, creamy, soft, cold sweet melon to top off the night with a smile.

Oh, before the pictures, I can’t believe how hard it is to find a raw cantaloupe sorbet recipe on the web. I guess people really don’t like this stuff – or – at least the raw folks haven’t really figured this one out yet. I’ll post it and hopefully the world of folks reading here can conspire to enhance this recipe so as to really make this melon flavor pop!

Recipe:

  • ½ ripe cantaloupe melon
  • 1 Mire’s lemon
  • ¼ cup pure raw agave syrup

As you can see, the ingredient list is really simple. Make sure that you don’t use a large melon, but simply a great ripe medium size one. Cut it in half, remove the seeds and proceed to slice the melon into small cubes for you’re going to place it in the freezer for 1 hour. If you space them out well, they will cool faster.

Once lightly frozen, squeeze the juice of the lemon and add the agave syrup to your high powered blender (a cheap blender won’t have the muscle to liquefy this fruit when it’s frozen). Using the tamper, quickly grind the melon chunks into your sorbet. It’s going to be thick, so you’ll have to work hard and fast.

One trick is to quickly get it mixed up and turn the blender off. At this point, there will still be really small chunks, but you can taste it to see if it’s got the right amount of sweetener. If the fruit is really ripe, you’ll want to use less syrup. Once it tastes right, you’ll want to get back to blending; but this time on high so it can be really fluffed up. This shouldn’t take more than about 20 seconds. If you blend too long, you’ll melt it into juice – so be quick!

In the end, you’ll get a great soft-serve that will slowly melt in a room temperature bowl.

I have to admit that this recipe doesn’t knock your socks off, but if you like melon (like I do) you’ll get a great cold melon surprise that will satisfy any late night craving!

Enjoy…

Oh, and like I said above, if you give this one a try and find something to add that would complement the cantaloupe, please feel free to share! Next time I might add a couple strawberries or maybe a spoon full of powdered cacao. I’ll update this posting if (when) I do.

Cherry Truffles – A Chocolate Dream

Chocolate truffles are no longer just for Christmas! Here is it, the end of July and I’ve found a few extra hours to craft some hand rolled cherry truffles. If you haven’t ever given this a try – and you love making decadent deserts – this project is for you.

The filling has the consistency of gooey fudge and the outside has just a little crunch to it. The secret is the amaretto (or almond extract) that you add to the filling. It’s also worthwhile to serve these truffles are room temperature, but be prepared to get chocolate on your fingers. These are not M&Ms!

Don’t those look great! I hope they last more than just a couple days.

Recipe: for the filling

  • 1 cup dried cherries
  • ½ cup Almond butter (paste)
  • 1/8th tsp Sea Salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla powder
  • 6 large Medjool dates
  • ½ cup cacao powder
  • 1 oz Amaretto (or 1 tsp almond extract)

This one takes a little bit of preparation – you need to reconstitute the cherries and dates. With the cherries place just a little less than 1 cup on a jar and barely cover with water. Let it stand a few hours. Once rehydrated, remove from water and reserve. With the dates, if you’re using amaretto, pit them and cover with the ounce of amaretto. If you’re using the almond extract, add a little water and let them rehydrate a bit.

We’re going to use a mixer with the S-blade to create this filling. To start with, add the cherries (without the water) and dates (with the water) and blend. You want to really break these down before going further.

Once the mixture looks like really good jam, you want to add the other ingredients. Make an effort to mix the powder in before turning on the machine or you’ll get cacao everywhere. Once done, it will look like this:

At this point, you’ll want to cool it before rolling it into balls. I placed it in the fridge overnight.

While it’s still cold, you want to shape small spoonfuls into little round balls. I rub coconut butter on my hands and keep a little around so that the filling doesn’t stick so bad. Notice that in the following picture there are some that turn out smooth and others that are a little spiky. Well, the filling tends to pick up the coconut butter (oil) so you’ll get a feel for how often to replenish the coating on your hands.

Recipe: For the cacao coating

  • ½ lb. Cacao butter
  • ¾ cup cacao powder
  • 4 Tbsps Agave syrup
  • 1 tsp vanilla powder

Place the cacao butter in the dehydrator until it melts (or shave it and float a bowl of it in a hot water bath). After it’s melted, add the cacao and vanilla and stir toughly. Lastly, add the agave (if you like it really sweet (which I don’t) you’ll want to add a little more agave.

I melt the cacao butter in a 2 cup measuring cup so it’s a little steeper on the sides (more depth) so that when I dip the filling balls I can stretch the cacao butter a little further.

Using cold filling balls, place one on a fork and dip it in the warm cacao and remove. The cacao butter (coating) should harden fairly quickly around the cold filling. This should only take a few seconds. To get the chocolate coating fairly thick, you’ll want to dip it about three times.

In the end you get something like this…

… which you get to enjoy for lunches for a week or so!  This recipe makes about 50 once inch (or smaller) truffles.

I hope you love these as much as I do.

Cherry Cheesecake Topping – wow!

Sometimes you just stumble across something that makes you say wow! This is it – A sweet cherry sauce with a burst of almond. And it’s so amazingly simple. Rainer Cherries, Agave syrup and Amaretto. Check this out.

Doesn’t that look good?

It was.

So, I’ve probably made The Raw Seed fermented nut cheesecake a half dozen times now and it seems to get better each time. I’ve made some modifications to Meredith’s recipe and so I’ve updated my original article with my new advice. I really highly recommend this tasty cake. Don’t try to do anything fancy with it the first couple times and you can’t fail.

But this last time I wanted to give it a little … Za-za-za-zing. I looked around the refrigerator and noticed that I had peaches, strawberries, blueberries and Rainer cherries. I’m always looking for another way to enjoy cherries, so this idea came to me. It’s this simple.

Recipe:

  • 1 cup fresh Rainer cherries
  • 1 oz Agave syrup
  • 1 oz Amaretto

De-steam and pit the cherries. Place them in a small blender. Using your favorite shot glass, measure out about 1 shot amaretto and an equal amount agave syrup. Blend until smooth (like the picture above). You’ll have little bits of cherry skin, but overall it will have a watery consistency.  Pour it over a small slice of cheesecake and you’ve got something to blog about!

Who would have thought that this would taste so amazing together?