FOR THE SWEET TOOTH

Let's make something yummy; raw food inspired candy bars!
I say inspired as some greater connoisseur than I might go all picky and point out on something that might not be considered truly raw food (I've read that most nuts are steamed a bit prior to peeling them which results in the loss of some of the good stuff, to get the real raw-nuts one should order them from the internet. I go for regular ones though. I also used regular roasted cocoa powder, not the one that is made by raw fermented beans). I have some books on raw food and read a couple of blogs about it. But although I find it appealing to eat partly pure and un-cooked I actually haven't been using such recipes that much, yet at least.

I was in the mood to make something filthy good but still healthy -and yes, in some cases you can actually combine those, but you can't really be among those to count calories then- so inspired by other recipes I put together a mix of good and healthy foods.

You'll need: cold pressed virgin coconut oil, cocoa powder, stevia (or something else to sweeten with), ecological (=sulfate free)  dried apricots, fine ground almonds, walnuts.

Plus this yucky seeming thing here; dried dates soaking in some (a few spoons of) apple juice. I used about 12 dates (100grams), cut them in bits and let them soak for about 3 hours.


Scoop up the coconut oil n a small bowl and melt it by placing the bowl in hot water or in a pan with water on the stove. It will already melt in temperatures above +25 so you only need to heat the water a little bit. I used three huge (as in gigantic) scoops of coconut oil.

You do know cold pressed virgin coconut oil is like good for pretty much anything? So many things it almost sounds ridiculous? Google it. I use it for my skin and hair too; I have one jar for kitchen- and one jar for bathroom use.



Roughly grind the walnuts - I used about 40 grams  - and cut the apricots into small pieces. I used something like 14 apricots. Then mash the soaked dates into a puree (too un-interesting to get a picture of it's own. I did try though).



Mix the melted coconut oil with one tablespoon of stevia, cocoa powder (three table spoons) and finely ground almonds in a bowl. If you have a fancy machine in your kitchen you can grind your specially ordered raw almonds yourself; I used normal almond flour from the store. I put half a bag of the flour; 40 grams.

Pour in the walnuts and apricots and blend.



I remember I also had some cocoa nibs at home so I put in a couple of table spoons of those too.



One could perhaps roll balls out of this but I decided to make bars (or squares) out of this, so I put it into a pan - about 1cm thick.



Let cool in the fridge for some hours. Here 's a picture of some white cats for a change while waiting.
Dum-du-dum dum.



When you're done waiting, take out the pan and cut the chocolate into bars or squares and serve.


This was a bit of an experiment, but they turned out good!
However, I would recommend not making those oil scoops too gigantic; less would do. Next time I think I'll use less oil, some more almond flour and perhaps some more dates.  And a little less cocoa and a little more stevia.
(These should make it up to about a week in the refridgerator. You can also freeze them for later use.)



Since these turned pretty heavy I decided to have them with some fresh fruit. OK; berries.
And an episode of Game of Thrones.
Enjoy!