This simple, quick-to-prepare dish makes for a nice little sweet-treat to have with your tea or coffee, or to give to your kids (and know that there’s nothing artificial or denatured about it in the least).
This little “white chocolate” candy is mild, not-too-sweet, and melts into a kind of soft-taffy texture that quickly melts down the back of your mouth with all that honey-vanilla goodness.
I also found an interesting article that mentions some research that has found that cacao butter suppresses excessive T-cell activity in the immune system, which could make it favorable for individuals suffering from overactive immune systems, with conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and the like.
Sounds like something that might be worth looking into for many people…
But I just like it because it’s a small bit of something vanilla-y, and for the lusciously melty texture as it warms up in your mouth.
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Fast. Non-fat, except for whatever macadamia nuts you throw on top. Quick. Made from just a few basic ingredients. Filling. Delicious.
If there are a few raw quick-meals you want to learn, something like this should be in the Top 10.
You can whip this up for a filling breakfast that will definitely last through til lunch, if you have a busy morning planned. You can have this on the table in minutes for a quick dinner if you need to be somewhere soon, or don’t want something that will weight you down.
And it would make a lovely dessert. I would serve this simple dish at a non-raw buffet, that’s how delicious it is. And with all the baked, choco-fatty stuff people bring to those things, imagine the delight that everyone will experience that they can enjoy something lusciously delicious, creamy, and sweet… without guilt.
The creamy sauce is made with bananas and juicy medjool dates, without any fat or nut milk. And if you have a Blendtec or Vitamix, you can cycle it through a few times until it’s warm, turning the dish into some seriously soothing comfort food.
Seriously… good eats.
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This unique Live Green Smoothie is a meal, and though you could probably live on the thing, could also easily categorize as either a dessert or a high-test energy drink.
Wow.
Vanilla and macadamia nuts together are just a classic combo. And here, they combine to make a rich, creamy, delicious, mild smoothie, just loaded with minerals from the kale and the macadamia nuts, and rich with polysaccharides from the fresh aloe vera gel, it’s a pure delight. And such a lovely shade of delicate green! Green smoothies never had it so good.
And if you don’t have kale handy, throw in some fresh spinach or parsley instead. If you don’t have medjool dates, use some raw honey, cane sugar, or agave nectar if you’d like. Not into bananas? Use a heaping tablespoon of coconut oil and a good chunk of raw cacao butter instead, and jack up the sweetener a tad bit.
Extremely versatile recipe. And one you should make sure you try to keep the ingredients around as staples, so you can whip it up whenever you really need some deep, natural nourishment.
And a teaspoon of raw maca powder in this recipe would work very well, too!
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I’m just delighted with this shake. After feeling like a million bucks after yesterday’s maca recipe, and feeling an extra spark in my step today despite a very challenging week healthwise, I was eager to add another maca smoothie option to my kitchen. And this one is something most people could whip up regularly without getting tired of it… and from pretty pedestrian ingredients, once the raw maca powder has been procured!
If you’ve never tried maca powder and have been curious to venture into the unknown, might I suggest you start with this recipe!
Light, frothy, creamy, very vanilla-y… hard, even, to taste the maca.
One of the underlying flavors I always get when I smell maca is a kind of caramel nuance, which makes me thing of vanilla, creamy banana, dates, and aromatic coconut oil, all of which are combined here to a delicious shake a kid would never know was meant to promote energy and health.
I hope you like it.
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Chocolate is set here, but much darker than shows up in the photo.
Frankly, this is a great chocolate to make when you just want chocolate… forget the nuts & nibs.
Honestly, when you make a raw chocolate treat like this for the first time and experience and fast and easy it is to make something so satisfyingly delicious, you’ll wonder why you ever made those Peanut M&M runs to 7-11.
This particular chocolate is a little different from my other raw cacao recipes… it highlights some awesome Mexican vanilla a friend so graciously gifted me recently (a gigantic quart-sized bottle… can you imagine???), and is nicely salted to offset the sweet. For best results, definitely use the best quality vanilla and naturally mineralized salt you can get your hands on.
And if you have all these good-but-simple things already in your kitchen as staples, this is a no-brainer to whip up on-the-fly. If you don’t have macadamia nuts or nibs, you can use any other nut or seed — and don’t forget Goji Berries. Or you could just eat the stuff off a spoon as soon as it’s mixed up.
I swear to you, it takes probably just two minutes to get to that point. That’s how quick a chocolate-fix this really is. Heh.
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This is another recipe I so wish I had conceived of earlier in life — makes me think, “Who knew?” What a luscious, satisfying combination, great for a quick breakfast (especially if you’ve made the Vanilla Milk the night before, from either raw pumpkin seeds or raw almonds), but also wonderful for a light supper or a pot luck dessert.
The persimmons have a sweet, custardy delicacy off-set by the crunch of the macadamias, and the Vanilla Milk ties it all together with its creaminess.
And to think it’s loaded with minerals such as zinc from the pumpkin seeds or calcium from the almond, and magnesium from the macadamia nuts, beta carotene and antioxidants and a host of healthifying phytonutrients from the persimmons… It’s all very, very, good.
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I love young coconuts, but since I moved this past summer, I haven’t found a local source for them… and have had plenty of other recipes options that I haven’t been motivated to put a request into my local grocer to order a case for me. I’ll get to it… because I surely love them.
But yesterday I was shopping with a dear friend of mine at an organic market near her home (not in my neck of the woods) and we came across some lovely young coconuts! See she picked one up and back at her place I showed her how to whip up a delicious smoothie with it. Wishing right now I had the rest of it to polish off while I write this. Dang, it was yummy. But here’s the recipe for it… made with utterly pedestrian ingredients (except for the young coconut).
Young coconut is a great energizer and replenisher of electrolytes, so excellent either before or after a workout, and wonderful for breakfast, or for a late-day energy kick. A fun fact most people don’t know is that the water in young coconuts was used for transfusions of blood plasma during WWII in the south pacific. It’s bio-identical to human plasma. Gotta love that.
What IS a young coconut?
A young coconut is NOT the hard-shelled brown coconut most of us are familiar seeing in the grocery stores. The shell is actually smaller and more delicate, and is thus cut down to the white fibery protective layer beneath the green husk, in a sort of pyramid shape, and then it’s shrink-wrapped in plastic. The coconut water is sweeter, and the flesh is very delicate, with the texture ranging from firm jello to firm custard to soft cheese, depending on that maturity of the coconut.
There is just so much one can do with that flesh, I could do a different recipe every day and never get exhausted. Whipped cream, puddings & pie fillings, “cheeses”… oh dear me, what a culinary resource young coconut is. But the healthifying aspect of young coconuts is equally as exciting! If you can manage to have one a day, do go for it! There are some excellent resources of quality young coconuts online… if you have the pocketbook for it.
How To Open A Young Coconut
Here are a few resources for how to open young coconuts. Personally, I prefer a sharp meat cleaver. I press the lower edge into the flesh around the top of the coconut, give it a good whack against the countertop or floor, do that a few times around the top, then peel the loosened flap back.
To scoop out the inner flesh, a simple metal spoon scraped against the shell is all that’s required.
From Rawguru.com (where you can find some excellent young coconuts for sale…).
(When I use my meat cleaver, I do not lift it away from the coconut. So proceed with the technique above at your risk… and a steady hand!)
I’m visiting family in Florida right now for the holidays, and when I saw the giant bowls of freshly picked, home-grown oranges, tangerines, grapefruits, and lemons in their kitchen, I knew straightaway that citrus was going to figure prominently in a few of my recipes this week! Then my mom asked me to show her how to make some tasty raw chocolate goodies, and I knew the first thing I wanted to make: these deliciously juicy chocolate-dipped tangerine slices!
What a great combo… the sweet, juicy tang of tangerine with luxurious dark chocolate. And so easy… you whip up the chocolate in minutes, dip the fruit twice, and store the plate of treats in the fridge. Nothing complicated, other than waiting a few minutes in between dips for the chocolate to harden in the freezer.
When you bite into these babies, the delicate hard-chocolate shell crunches into the cool sweetness of the tangerine for a juicy bite that’s both refreshing and just slightly decadent! And if you can find “tangelos” at your grocer’s instead of tangerines, even better — you won’t have to spit out a pip when you’re done!
I brought this plate over to my brother’s for dessert and left the plate unattended in the kitchen, only to find it half-demolished just moments later by all the kids who’d gotten to it before dinner was served. But with this recipe… all natural, rich with undenatured nutrients… who cares? Was probably the healthiest thing they ate all day.
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Maca root, a staple food in Peru and a superfood that comes to us from the Incan culture, is well-known as a potent adaptogen and long-reputed to increase libido and fertility.
Thing is, as perhaps the most potent radish on the planet, it has a distinctive and highly dominant flavor that can be challenging to add to recipes. It goes well with chocolate, though, so I set out to create a sweet “MacaNut” recipe that would enable the tasty enjoyment of maca as a food rather than via a supplemented capsule. Am happy to report my son’s review of the MacaNuts: “Tasty and delicious!”
This recipe for “pecan turtles” uses raw cacao powder, raw honey, and cacao butter — and a few other goodies — and whips up very quickly into a delicious superfood snack with the health benefits of maca.
And if you don’t have maca on hand, you can also make it. You can also make the pecan/maca mixture and layer it on top of a raw chocolate mousse tart instead of covering the pecans in chocolate. Would make a delicious dessert for a raw pot luck! And you can dehydrate the pecans without the chocolate, until nice and crisp!
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Wow… love this recipe. It honestly doesn’t get any easier than this, and it’s recipes like this that, as you slurp them up with relish, you’re bound to wonder… “Why in the world did I never make this stuff before???”
I’ve had this bin of raisins in my fridge for awhile…raisins homemade and sun-dried by my great-aunt in Greece, made from grapes grown locally on her island of Samos. They were lovingly packed with bay leaves, and each delicately seeded grape still has a bit of its twig attached, presumably a mark of hand-crafting because the only way to achieve that is to actually cut each grape off its bunch.
Anyway, these exotic raisins are just delicious. But to be honest, I’m not a lover of dried fruit, not to snack on by itself. So these beautiful, rarified raisins have been languishing by their lonesome, beloved but neglected, while every time I see them I’ve reminded myself I need to conjure up a purpose for them.
Well… purpose found!
Raisins are the unexpectedly perfect sweetener for this sorbet. Their dense sweetness effortlessly balances the tartness of the pomegranates and cranberries, and the raisiny undertone adds a depth that might be overwhelming with fruits of less… personality.
You may not have my great-aunt’s special raisins to give a slight exoticism to your sorbet… but some quality organic raisins will no doubt pleasure your taste buds most gratifyingly.
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