Chocolate-Free Chocolate

I’ve been busy working on a cookbook for the last year. It started out as a paleo collection of recipes that I’ve now modified into a vegan collection instead [read: she took out the honey!]. The latest addition are chocolates that don’t contain any cocoa or cacoa. Instead they are created from dried coconut, coconut sugar, vanilla, sea-salt and either carob or freeze-dried raspberry, which makes them chocolate-free chocolates as far as I’m concerned.

The fat content is pretty high in these, however, they’re made with all-natural ingredients, and, juxtaposed against store-bought chocolates, these are classed as a pristine, clean food: they don’t contain any of the crap that mass produced chocolates have, such as high fructose corn syrup, artificial colours and flavours, preservatives, gluten or milk. As a bonus, no animal was harmed in the making of these; in fact, if you share these with your animal friends, you can make them feel happy just like you’re going to be when you sit down to watch TV and you pop one of these in your mouth. (DO skip the xylitol if giving to dogs; their digestion can’t handle it.).

Chocolate-Free Chocolate Recipe

Because the following ‘chocolates’ are made from dried coconut and don’t contain any cocoa, cacao or chocolate, they’re not actually chocolate, ergo though, if you cannot have chocolate, these here will hit the spot for any cravings that you have for the beast. Sugar can be substituted with xylitol or omitted altogether: the coconut is sweet enough by itself. To make these, you will need either chocolate moulds or ice-cube trays for the chocolates to set in.

White Chocolate

3 cups of dried coconut

1 cup of coconut sugar or xylitol

pinch of sea salt

(Sweetener can be replaced with 4 TBSPN of Agave or Maple syrup but the mixture will lose it’s runny consistency and will need to be pushed into moulds with fingers)

Carobs

3 cups of dried coconut

pinch of sea salt

1 cup of coconut sugar or xylitol

5 TBSPN carob powder

Raspberry Chocolate

3 cups of dried coconut

pinch of sea salt

1 cup of coconut sugar or xylitol

5 TBSPN freeze-dried raspberry powder

Method

Mix coconut on high in your blender for 8-12 minutes. (The more powerful your blender, the shorter blending time.) Once your coconut has taken on the consistency of a thick liquid, add in the rest of your ingredients. Mix for another minute. Pour into moulds and set in the freezer for 30 minutes. Pop out into a sealed container and store in the fridge.

Enjoy!