Chocolate fruit and nut balls

One of the first recipes or blog posts I saw from the sort of 'whole food' community was one about something called 'bliss balls'.  They were described as little balls of chocolatey heaven with none of the guilt. Or similar!  I rather liked the sound of that so I bought the ingredients and followed the recipe all excited.  Then, there they were, these little balls of loveliness all ready and waiting to pop into my eager and waiting mouth...

...I hated them.

And I hated the fact that I hated them.  I wanted to love them as much as blog poster did.  I wanted to feel a part of this wholesome whole food eating bliss ball rolling community.  

So I ate another.  Nope, still horrible.  They were just too sickly, a bit greasy, not quite sweet or chocolatey enough and just all wrong from my point of view.  A bit like nutella, or ferrero rocher...just not quite right if you ask me!

A while later, having seen about 85 billion more posts and recipes on these little balls of wrongness, I tried another recipe.  Still not buying it.

Then this evening I thought to myself, when I whizz up the dates and nuts and whatnot in the blender I always really like the taste of what comes out, and I'm pretty sure with a bit of tweaking here and there I could make the mixture into balls.

So, off I popped into the kitchen armed with my trusty hand blender (well, no, that was already there, but you know what I mean), rooted about in jars of stuff and came up with the following recipe which......I LOVED!! And so did Alex so there are now none left already.  Oops.

Here's what I did:

handful brazils

handful cashews

2 dessert spoons almond butter

tspoon or 2 date syrup

5 pitted medjool dates

1 table spoon raw cacao powder

You could use any nuts really but I just fancied this mix today.

Then all I did was whizz it up on full power for a bit until it resembled what I can only describe as crumbly soil!  There should still be visible bits of nut in it and it should be crumbly rather that gooey - add more dry stuff if not.

Despite being crumbly, it is also nice and sticky so then, just grab some in your hands and press it together into a ball shapes.  The mixture is enough to make 10 balls.

10 little balls of chocolatey yumminess I PROMISE.  Not too sickly, not oily, not sort of airy fairy chocolate, just yum with a nice consistency.

And whilst not the healthiest of all things ever, all whole foods, all natural ingredients and all yum.

I'd love to hear if anybody found another 'bliss ball' style recipe they liked or what you think of this one? Think I might experiment with a bit more fruitiness somehow next time.  Or dip them in molten dark chocolate and pop in the fridge to set. Or add some rose water. Or....

Best EVER chocolate mousse

It's one of those evenings again when I just fancy something a bit naughty.  I demand pudding!  Only we don't eat 'pudding' so there isn't any,  But there is a food mixer and a whole shelf of jars full of whole foody type bits which, with a little bit of cunning, can quickly resemble any number of pudding-like delicacies.

And given I'm impatient and it's already 21.30 tonight's effort has to not need cooking or freezing or in fact anything other than tipping, whizzing and eating.

So I'm off to make a chocolate mousse.  A dairy and refined sugar free chocolate mousse with an avocado and cacao powder, obviously.

But what recipe to use?  I've read and tried several avocado 'chocolate' mousse recipes and haven't been overly impressed with any of them to be honest.  The ones with banana taste like mushed up banana.  The ones without banana taste like avocado with a bit of cocoa powder.  I want one that tastes like chocolate mousse without actually being chocolate mousse.  I refuse to believe that healthy alternative puddings have to taste healthy or alternative, I want one that tastes as gooey, silky smooth, rich and delicious as the one we're all familiar with.

So, I set about making my own recipe up and lo and behold, it works!  In fact it's SO convincing and yummy I've now eaten the whole thing!

Here's what I used:

1 avocado
5 pitted medjool dates
2 dessert spoons cacao powder
1 dessert spoon raw honey
2 caps full vanilla extract
splash water
pinch of Maldon seasalt

I bunged it all in my mini hand blender thingamy and whizzed it up until it was super smooth and silky.  Actually, it still had a few tiny lumps of date left in it which added a certain something.

Honestly, I am not lying when I say this was right up there with the best chocolate mousses of them

all.  It's so close to the original I almost feel sick and have a headache! But not quite ;)  It's rich, deeply chocolatey, gooey and creamy with a great depth of favourite, sweet but not too sweet and with a perfect texture and consistency.  It would have been even nicer with some raspberries or strawberries but I didn't have any.

Now, clearly this is not 'health' food as such, although raw cacao powder, avocados and raw honey do have some lovely health benefits. Eating 5 bowls of this twice a day is not going to help anybody's weight loss regime or whatever, but I believe in progress not perfection and if the options are shop bought chocolate mousse full of chemicals, sugar and lard, or this one made with basically fruit, then I'm choosing this one every time.

PS whilst I may have nailed my chocolate mousse recipe, I clearly have some way to go with my chocolate mousse photography skills, but can assure you it tastes a lot better than I have made it look!

Chocolate biscuit crumb

WO WA WEE WA! I have just made something very very nice indeed!

So, as usual I was watching MasterChef and there was chocolate chocolate everywhere and I needed to get me some. 

So I decided to make something up and it went like this:

1 heaped tspoon almond butter (any nut butter will work)

Small handful whole almonds 

1 tablespoon pure maple syrup

5 pitted dates 

1 tablespoon raw cacao powder

(You may need to tweak amounts according to taste and also because I'm not very exact with my measurements!)

Whizz it all up in a blender and it'll make a consistency like that chocolate soil posh chefs make, but if you squidge it up  its goey enough to hold its form. 

Then I tasted it and nearly went straight to heaven! It is outrageously delicious and tastes exactly like a posh biscuit base. 

I decided to leave it as 'soil' or a crumb rather than make it into a solid mass but I may make the leftovers into little balls of yumminess. 

Anyway, I served it sprinkled over Greek yogurt with some raspberries and enjoyed every mouthful. 

As I'm writing alex is now also appreciating his bowlful. A lot :)

It's amazing what you can do once you've learnt a few tricks with the old date/nut butter/blender combo. 

This is definitely a favourite so far and totally satisfied my MasterChef chocolate envy. 

Brownies, all the yum and none of the guilt

A little while ago I discovered the Deliciously Ella blog and was instantly hooked.  I love everything about it, not least the amazing recipes.  Ever since I've been wanting to try out these little babies but couldn't find buckwheat flour anywhere.  Then the other week I just decided to search online and found this website where I found all sorts of whole food goodies and snapped up some buckwheat flour no probs.

But I forgot to make the brownies.

Until this article from MindBodyGreen popped up on my facebook feed yesterday. So, fed up from lying on the sofa all day and in need of a reason to stand up and move about gingerly (still suffering with sciatica), not to mention needing cheering up, I decided what better time to give these a whirl.

My love of Ella quadrupled when I realised I could just download the app and then pull up the recipe there on my phone (excellent) but for everybody else, here's the link to the recipe on her website.


It will take a bit of making sure you've got all the right bits and pieces as the recipe calls for the aforementioned buckwheat flour, raw cacao powder and sweet potatoes amongst other things but the more I cook like this the more I have such things to hand and now, ready armed with the buckwheat flour I had everything I needed.

The only problem I had with the method itself was one I've encountered before with smoothies, and that's that dates don't like being blended.  I decided to use my mini blender rather than my Kitchen Aid upright but that may have been a mistake as the dates just got flung about the bottom of the thing rather than obligingly being chopped up into smithereens.  This meant that rather than the creamy sweet potato/date mixture I should have had, I had a slightly less creamy mixture with random chunks of sweet potato and date here and there.


My next minor issue came when I spread the mixture across the 'lined baking dish' as suggested, I realised it was spread much much thinner than a) a normal brownie would be and b) Ella's example in her photos.  So a note about the size of dish may have helped here. I'm not sure I know what a 'baking dish' actually is but I used my normal oven baking tin.  Next time, I won't! I'll choose something smaller but deeper.

Finally method wise, the recipe says to cook for 20-30 minutes but actually I reckon 30-40 would be better.  I checked at 20 and 25 and then did another 5 minutes before the fork came out clean and actually, would probably have liked them a little crunchier on the top...maybe longer cooking would't have achieved that but think I'll experiment a bit next time.

So, having cooked them and patiently waited the 10 minutes before I was allowed to chop them up and taste them, I greedily gobbled one (ok, 3, mine were only small) up.  YUM.  Decided to do it properly and had another on a plate with some greek yog and some raspberries.

So, the verdict:  they are gooey, moist and delicious.  Chocolatey and sweet but not sickly or heavy like brownies would normally be.  I think maybe next time I'd add a tiny smidgeon more cacao just to make sure I'm really satisfying that deep chocolate hit, but only a little as it was pretty good already.

I was just sitting here thinking about how I could experiment and fiddle about with the recipe to make different versions (maybe banana, coconut, ginger, beetroot?  Beetroot makes a great chocolate cake...) when I've spotted Ella has another brownie recipe on her blog now for chilli and beetroot brownies...definitely trying those and think I'll try a ginger concoction of my own too. Watch this space!

Anyway, overall a definite winner. Thanks Ella!