Crunchy Chocolate Treats
Submitted by maidenofthewell on May 17, 2009 - 2:18pm
Servings:
Makes about 5 chocolate bars At a consultation with a naturopath about my need to gain weight, eat more and improve my relationship with food, she advised me to have a treat as an afternoon snack. What I really wanted to make was a raw chocolate bar but didn't have enough ingredients to make lots, or any trays to set it in, so I made these crunchy things as a kind of experiment. I haven't tasted the finished product yet as they're still freezing but the bits I tasted whilst making it were yum! The photo doesn't really do them justice, they look a lot more decadent in real life!
Ingredients:
I didn't measure anything out so this is just a guess.
1/2 cup cacao butter
Cacao powder (really don't know how much I used, enough to make it chocolaty enough!)
A few handfuls of walnuts
Pumpkin Seeds
Hemp Seeds
Sunflower Seeds (you could use any nuts/seeds you want. It was probably 3-4 cups worth of nuts & seeds in total)
Small pinch of stevia (or you could use agave if you're into that)
1 banana
Preparation:
Soak the nuts and seeds for 6 hours. Drain and rinse and process so they're finely chopped and mixed together.
Gently melt your cacao butter. I put mine in a bowl and held it over the steam coming from simmering water, checking to make sure it didn't get hot (it actually stayed surprisingly cold while it was melting!).
Pour your nut and seed mix into a bowl, add cacao powder and stevia to taste. It really can take some balancing sometimes as stevia is so strong, I spent a while getting the right balance between cacao and stevia.
Press it all together so it sticks, the cacao butter should hold it in place.
Form into chocolate bar shapes, as many as you want, I made 5 medium ones (so I can have one at work each day this week), but you could make a couple of big ones, or lots of small chocolates.
Mash the banana and add some cacao powder, you might need to add a tiny bit of water as well depending on the ripeness of your banana.
Spread this over the chocolate bars like an icing.
Put in the freezer to set. This could take a while, I put mine in about 4 hours ago and the icing is still a bit soft but I don't have a proper freezer. It will (hopefully) be worth the wait though.
Once done, eat and enjoy!
