Chocolate Is Healthy

Eat.Drink.Better posted this amazing raw chocolate truffle recipe, made from nut pulp (from making nut milk), raw nut or seed butter, raw cacao powder, raw agave nectar, vanilla, salt and some shredded coconut.   Raw chocolate truffles make a wonderful dessert to enjoy at home, or package up an assortment and give them as gifts to both vegans and non-vegans.  They’re fun and easy to make and can be stored in the freezer.

Raw Chocolate Truffles : Eat. Drink. Better..

Glamour published this great raw, vegan chocolate mousse recipe made with cacao powder and avocado, and sweetened with dates and agave nectar. This recipe shows there’s so much more to avocados than guacamole!  If you like this, you may enjoy this as frosting for a vegan cake. It looks simple and fabulous.

Raw Chocolate Mousse
Courtesy of Susan Powers of Rawmazing

Ingredients:

3/4 cup dates soaked until very soft with pits removed
2 avocados
1 cup almond milk
1/2 cup almond butter
3/4 cup cacao powder
1/2 c agave nectar

Preparation:

In food processor or blender, combine all ingredients and blend or process until smooth. Refrigerate, then enjoy. You will not believe how good this is!

Afternoon Snack: Would You Try This Raw “Chocolate Mousse”? (P.S. It’s Made With Avocados!): Vitamin G: Health & Fitness: glamour.com.

Have you ever dreamed of being a chocolatier?  Treehugger posted a great review of the Navitas Naturals Organic Chocolate Kit.  This looks like a fantastic gift for the chocolate lover with delicious results. And, Navitas Naturals Chocolate Kits are 100% organic, kosher, vegan, gluten-free, and raw.

The DIY chocolate kit requires no special equipment. The process involves some simple slicing, melting, mixing and freezing, and your chocolates are done in minutes!

The kit contains all organic, raw superfoods including premium cacao, maca, lucuma and mesquite.

Here’s an excerpt from the review:

“All I needed was two smallish bowls, a spoon, a knife, and ice cube tray. Shave and stir, drop in the super berries, pour into ice tray molds, slide into the freezer to set. Within minutes (just like the box promised). Pop them out and there were a dozen perfect little dark chocolate candies. Move out of the way, Whitman’s. Forget, Frangos. So long, Sees. And bye-bye to pre-packaged natural equivalents.

For ten bucks and ten minutes, you, too, can be a chocolatier. No one will guess it’s so easy. As I said, I’m predisposed to chocolate, so when I taste tested one and liked it, and gobbled another, I recognized my bias. The chocolate tasting party would be the judges. “You made these!?” they exclaimed.”

DIY Superfood Chocolates: Good and Good for You, Too? : TreeHugger.

There’s an excellent post over at Raw Epicurean about our favorite subject, raw cacao.  It’s a very straightforward introduction to cacao, where it comes from, how it’s processed and what it tastes like.  It also provides an overview of the nutritional value of cacao, without getting too scientific on us.

Even more exciting, they have a contest going on this month where you can win cacao products, so check it out!

She also provides this great recipe for chocolate sauce:

Chocolate Sauce

Make this sauce ahead; keep refrigerated up to two weeks.

1/2 cup cacao nibs powder
1/2 cup agave, or sweetener of choice [adjust amount as needed]
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoons organic vanilla extract

Blend all ingredients together in a food processor until smooth.

Makes 3/4 cups

Cacao :: Herb of the Month : Raw Epicurean.

We love finding new ideas for healthy chocolate gifts. Vegan and fair trade, Nicobella chocolates use organic ingredients such as sunflower seed butter, oat milk and fair trade dark chocolate, creating blissful chocolate assortments.  Flavors include walnut flaxseed crunch, sunflower banana butter and ginger green tea.   (The walnut flaxseed was a clear favorite in the review we found below).

“Created by dietitian, nutritionist and yoga instructor Nichole Dandrea, nicobella truffles are made with 70 percent dark chocolate — fair trade, of course — and slightly sweetened with agave nectar and brown rice syrup. Open the package and you’ll be able to identify the flavor of each truffle by the decorative garnish. The Ginger Green Tea truffle, for example, is sprinkled with a green tea powder; the Blueberry Almond truffle has a piece of almond pressed onto a corner.

How do the truffles taste? My favorite of the six is the most crunchy-sounding of the bunch: Walnut Flaxseed Crunch. This decadent truffle had a perfect nutty creaminess — full of Omega-3s, to boot. I also loved the Pumpkin Chia truffle, which tasted like a rich, flavorful pie covered in chocolate, and the Ginger Green Tea truffle, which had a fierce ginger kick that made it the most intense of the six.”

Chocolate truffles made vegan, organic, fair trade and tasty!