My best friend told me last week that I absolutely must try this recipe for Raw Caramel Slice, sooner rather than later. A friend of hers from work brought it in to share and my dessert aficionado friend reported it as spectacular. I duly bought the ingredients and had them sitting in the pantry until yesterday when I finally had time to give it a try. As usual, she was right. These are good.
I made a few adjustments by adding extra salt and I made my chocolate topping with cacao butter rather than coconut oil, but otherwise this amazing recipe is originally by Rachel of In Spaces Between – Raw Choc Caramel Bites.
1 CUP MACADAMIA NUTS 1 CUP ALMONDS
1 CUP MEDJOOL DATES
CARAMEL FILLING
1 CUP MEDJOOL DATES 2 TABLESPOONS COCONUT OIL 1 TEASPOON VANILLA EXTRACT 1/3 CUP WATER
2 PINCHES FLAKED SEA SALT
CHOCOLATE TOPPING
1/2 CUP CACAO OR DUTCH PROCESS COCOA 2 TABLESPOONS DARK AGAVE NECTAR 3/4 CUP GENTLY MELTED CACAO BUTTER
SMALL PINCH OF FLAKED SEA SALT
Base Whizz all the base ingredients in a food processor until combined. You want to keep a little bit of the nutty texture in there. Press into a square or rectangular tin and set aside.
Caramel Blend all ingredients in the food processor until smooth, adding water slowly as you go. The coconut oil when refrigerated will thicken the mixture. Spread this on top of the base and place it in the freezer for 15 minutes.
Chocolate Topping Melt the Cacao Butter in a double saucepan on a very, very low heat and stir until liquid. Blend with the cocoa, agave and salt until very smooth. Pour and spread it over the caramel layer, freeze or refrigerate for an hour and you’re done!
Tastes best cut into small, bite-sized pieces.
I’m back after a loooong blogging break. My excuse is the one we all make: I’ve been busy.
Busy with what? Well, I’ve moved out of my design studio space. I’d been there for five years, so it was emotional moving on, even though in the grand scheme of things it was the right thing to do.
I’ve been in touch with the lovely Annette from Pure Glow Cleanse about her guest posting some recipes. Pure Glow Cleanse are Perth’s first cold-pressed juice cleanse delivery and I can’t wait to try it out when they launch. More on them soon.
I’ve also been contracting making online stuff at Naked Specs and Stonebarn, as well as continuing with some of my freelance work, so it’s been late nights and a lot of green juice in between, but I’m feeling more and more in balance as the warmer weather approaches.
And with the warmer weather comes summery fruit – my favourites! This salad features sweet strawberries paired with spicy ginger and bitter raddichio leaves to balance out the flavours.
STRAWBERRY GINGER SALAD
3 CUPS SHREDDED RADICCHIO LEAVES 10 STRAWBERRIES, HULLED AND SLICED 1/2 AVOCADO, CHOPPED HANDFUL OF FRESH MINT LEAVES
15 PECAN NUTS, CHOPPED ROUGHLY
DRESSING
1 TEASPOON FRESH GRATED GINGER 1 TABLESPOON OLIVE OIL 1 DESSERTSPOON FRESH LEMON JUICE 1 TEASPOON AGAVE NECTAR OR HONEY
1/2 TEASPOON SEA SALT
To make the dressing, shake all ingredients together in a jar until well combined. Set aside. Mix all salad ingredients together in a separate bowl, and stir through the dressing just before serving.
This super yummy smoothie recipe is a guest post from my beautiful friend Gráinne who runs Karratha Yoga. If you’re up in the West Australian Pilbara region, be sure to check out her classes. Thanks for sharing your recipe, Gráinne! If you want to keep this smoothie raw, replace the soy milk with coconut water or almond milk.
When I was in my 20s I spent eighteen months living in one of the most famous green tea growing areas of Japan, Shizuoka. A rural area, home to Mount Fuji and only an hour or two from Tokyo, the region is proud of its traditional tea heritage and I came to appreciate the mellow lift and health benefits of a good cup of Japanese green tea.
So, unsurprisingly one of my favourite treats is the classic green tea ice cream. This smoothie re-creates that yummy, creamy flavour without the refined sugar or dairy. Add more agave if you have a sweet tooth, or perhaps omit it altogether if you’re having this as a breakfast smoothie.
xx Gráinne – www.karrathayoga.com
Matcha Green Tea Smoothie
1 FROZEN BANANA (nice and sweet and ripe before peeling, cutting in half and popping in the freezer) 1 HUGE HANDFUL OF BABY SPINACH 1 CUP SOY MILK 1/2 CUP WATER 2 TEASPOONS GREEN TEA POWDER (make sure it is powdered “matcha” style green tea – not fine tea leaves)
1 TABLESPOON AGAVE SYRUP
Blitz and enjoy!
Gráinne recommends this brand of matcha (pronounced ma-cha): Absolute Green Organic Tea Powder
I’m crazy about carrot cake, but not so crazy about the usual refined, processed ingredients like wheat flour, butter, sugar and cream cheese! Instead, this cake uses beautiful whole foods with beautiful benefits to create a moist, carrot-cake texture such as fresh carrots for a boost of vitamin A and glowing skin, walnuts for vitamin E and omega-3 fatty acids and iron and potassium rich dried dates.
This recipe is a guest post I created for bespoke activewear company, Mylo-Dee. Mylo-Dee lets you customise your exercise clothing. You begin by selecting a silhouette (which has been designed with body shape in mind), then select a neckline, sleeves, back & front design details and fabric – all from beautiful French performance jersey, and voila! Your custom design is created and shipped to you. Pretty neat, huh?
Head over to the Mylo-Dee blog to get this carrot cake recipe:
Raw Carrot Cake with Creamy Lemon Icing recipe >
This feels like eating a dessert for breakfast (and it works as a dessert, too); it’s reminiscent of bircher muesli mixed with a fruit compote, except this raspberry and apple combination is free from refined sugar. The tiny pieces of chopped date are toffee-sweet surprises amongst the creamy chia pudding. The raspberries are full of vitamin C and Manganese and the chia seeds give you complete protein, a good dose of fibre and slow down the conversion of carbs to sugars, so a good start for your morning 🙂 They’re also high in Omega-3s. By eating chia rather than fish oil, you’ll be reducing the pressure on diminishing fish stocks in the world, and it’s a nice change from flaxseed oil.
I make this recipe in recycled jars for easy transport to work on the mornings I run out of time for breakfast. They’ll last a day in the fridge but are best eaten soon after making as chia seeds absorb up to nine times their weight in water (so drink lots)! Makes two.
RASPBERRY COMPOTE
3/4 CUP RASPBERRIES (I USED FROZEN ONES) 1 APPLE, PEELED AND CHOPPED 1 TEASPOON CINNAMON 4 DRIED DATES, CHOPPED INTO TINY PIECES
1/4 CUP WATER
CHIA BANANA PUDDING
1 BANANA, PEELED 3 TABLESPOONS WHITE CHIA SEEDS 1/2 CUP FRESH ORANGE JUICE 1 TABLESPOON LEMON JUICE
1/2 CUP ALMONDS
TOPPING
1 DESSERTSPOON CHOPPED PISTACHIOS
1 TEASPOON CURRANTS
For the raspberry compote, pulse all ingredients in a food processor until combined but still a little chunky. The dates won’t blend into the mixture, but this is a very good thing, trust me.
For the chia pudding, blend all ingredients in a food processor until smooth. The chia seeds will begin to thicken into a gel within the mixture creating the pudding-like texture.
In two glasses or jars, alternatively layer the chia pudding and the raspberry compote on top of each other. Sprinkle the top with chopped pistachios and currants. Good morning!
Hello from Hong Kong!
I’ve been neglecting my blog because I’ve been on holiday, but I’m sneaking in a few minutes to write a post. I’ve had lots of amazing food here so far, two of my favourites being a super fresh, green coconut at a thai restaurant and coconut and chocolate raw cheesecakes from Mana! Fast Slow Food. I’m yet to try their raw ice cream and I’m looking forward to checking out Grassroots Pantry this week for dinner, too. I’ll report back. The raw cheesecakes made me think of one of my favourite desserts I haven’t shared yet: Pomegranate Raspberry Cheesecake.
This recipe is almost the same as the Blueberry Cheesecake, but uses raspberries inside and pomegranate on top instead of blueberries. It’s also a blatent rip-off of Russell James’s pomegranate cheesecake concept, except that I use a lot less coconut oil and have a chocolate-almond base rather than a cashew base.
1 CUP ALMONDS 1/2 CUP DUTCH PROCESS COCOA OR CACAO POWDER
1/2 CUP DRIED DATES, CHOPPED
FILLING
1.5 CUPS RAW CASHEWS 1 TABLESPOON LEMON JUICE 1/3 CUP AGAVE NECTAR 1/4 CUP COCONUT OIL
3/4 CUP RASPBERRIES
TOPPING
POMEGRANATE SEEDS TAPPED OUT FROM 1 POMEGRANATE (I do it like this)
EXTRA AGAVE NECTAR
Line the bottom of a springform cake tin with cling film – I used quite a small one with a removable base for this recipe.
For the base, place all base ingredients in the food processor and process until it all comes together. Your food processor won’t like this at first and will make a loud noise as it grinds through the almonds. Persist. You may need to scrape down the sides every so often and add in a splash of water to help it along. Once it’s all come together pat this into the base of the tin and up the sides evenly. You may need to wet your hands with water slightly to smooth it out. Place it in the freezer until the filling is ready.
For the filling, place all ingredients in the food processor except the coconut oil and blend until smooth as possible (mine took around two-three minutes), then add in the coconut oil in a stream until incorporated. Spoon on top of base and smooth the top with the back of the spoon. Refrigerate overnight or place in the freezer for a few hours. When you’re ready to eat it, press the pomegranate seeds onto the top and drizzle with a teaspoon of agave nectar to make it shiny.
If you are into carrots as much as I am, there’s a great carrot website from the UK full of interesting carrot trivia. For example, in 1600s England, Parkinson, the celebrated botanist to King James comments that ladies wore carrot leaves in place of feathers in their hats – “the light, feathery verdure of which caused them to be no contemptible substitute for the plumage of birds.”
One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that dependent on my mood, texture and surface area makes a huge difference to how much I want to eat carrots. I do love them, (and the massive dose of Vitamin A is always a good thing), but I’m not always in the mood for the heavy crunching; sometimes it can feel a little laborious to get through a plate of carrot sticks.
This recipe uses shaved carrots to break up that heavy carrot density to make it easier to eat and is based on traditional Moroccan flavours. It uses both plumped sultanas and crunchy currants to give a great contrast of textures. A few tips: the fresher and younger the carrots, the better it tastes. And don’t skip the orange blossom water, it’s essential!
MOROCCAN CARROT SALAD
6 – 8 BABY CARROTS 1/3 CUP SULTANAS, SOAKED IN WARM TAP WATER FOR 10 MINS TO PLUMP & THEN DRAINED 1/3 CUP DRIED APRICOTS, DICED 1 TABLESPOON CURRANTS 1/3 CUP FLAKED ALMONDS
BUNCH OF FRESH CORIANDER, LEAVES PLUCKED
DRESSING
1/2 ORANGE, JUICED 1 TABLESPOON OLIVE OIL 1 TEASPOON FRESH, GRATED GINGER 1 TEASPOON ORANGE BLOSSOM WATER 1/2 TEASPOON CUMIN POWDER 1/4 TEASPOON CINNAMON POWDER
1/2 TEASPOON SEA SALT
Peel the carrots, then shave them into long strips using a regular vegetable peeler. Place in a bowl with the other salad ingredients. In a separate bowl, stir all the dressing ingredients together until smooth and then toss through the salad just before serving. Easy!
Salt flakes + chocolate = :¦:-•:*’””*:•.- SPECTACULAR -.•:*’””*:•.-:¦:
And that is all I have to say about that.
You don’t need a lot salt to accomplish the goal, which is to make the chocolate more chocolate-y. The rosemary is to give a deeper complexity to the flavour. I’m not going to lie, the taste of the avocado isn’t completely obliterated – you do get a very slight aftertaste, but it’s barely noticeable.
CHOCOLATE MOUSSE WITH ROSEMARY & SEA SALT
1 HASS AVOCADO, PEELED & DICED 3/4 CUP MAPLE SYRUP OR DARK AGAVE NECTAR 3/4 CUP DUTCH PROCESS COCOA OR UNSWEETENED COCOA POWDER 1 TEASPOON FRESH ROSEMARY, FINELY CHOPPED
1/2 VANILLA BEAN, SEEDS SCRAPED OUT
FOR THE TOP
1/2 TEASPOON FLAKED SEA SALT ROSEMARY SPRIGS
ROSEMARY FLOWERS
Put all the mousse ingredients into a food processor and blend until very smooth. Spoon into small containers (I made four) and top with a sprinkle of salt flakes, fresh rosemary sprigs and flowers.