The Raw Chocolate Company also generously provided our readers with a 10% off discount for all of April and May 2012, when you enter BetterRaw2012 at checkout. Postage is also FREE when you spend over £30!! www.therawchocolatecompany.com

1 cup almond milk
2 Tbsp chia seeds (also available from The Raw Choc Co)
1 vanilla bean, seeds only scraped
1-2 Tbsp The Raw Chocolate Co's Chocolate covered mulberries/ raisins/ goji berries
Optional: 1 tsp Bee Polen or raw honey

Stir the chia seeds in with the almond milk and keep stirring rapidly for 1-2 minutes so they don't clump up
Busy yourself with something else for about 10-20 minutes, stirring occasionally as the seeds begin to form a gel, which is so full of amazing fibre
Add the scraping from the vanilla bean and stir well
Sprinkle with bee pollen (or mix in the honey) and chocolate covered fruits
Serve immediately or within 8 hours

Cacao Mint brownie ingredients: coconut palm nectar, cashews, buckwheat, dates, cacao powder, cacao nibs, almond butter, vanilla powder, mint essential oil, himalayan salt
Cacao Cashew brownie ingredients: cashews, coconut palm nectar, buckwheat, dates, cacao powder, pecans, almond butter, cinnamon, vanilla powder, himalayan salt
Cacao Cocobanana brownie ingredients: cashews, coconut palm nectar, buckwheat, dates, banana powder, coconut flakes, cacao powder, coconut butter, vanilla powder, salt
Carob Orange brownie ingredients: coconut palm nectar, cashews, buckwheat, dates, hazelnuts, carob powder, vanilla powder, orange essential oil, himalayan salt
Carob Hazelnut brownie ingredients: coconut palm nectar, cashews, dates, buckwheat, hazelnuts, carob powder, vanilla powder, himalayan salt

I loved the subtlety of flavour in Cacao Cocobanana brownie. I've tasted many raw recipes with coconut, and they can go so wrong by over flavouring them or as soon as the coconut goes off even the tiniest amount, it transpires through every bite. This brownie was incredible, I wanted to savour every bite.

Cacao Cashew is the ideal brownie to go with anything- the ice cream recipe below, chocolate sauce, berries, strawberry sauce, on it's own, anything! Carob Orange was a delicious bite of sweet, tangy, chewy, chocolatey, citrus senses and I absolutely love that Gourmet Raw used Carob here instead of cacao for those looking for an alternative as close as possible to chocolate but without the stimulants, They also used whole buckwheat groats for added crunch, which I thought was a great touch.

But the one brownie, that was simply beyond all words was Carob Hazelnut! I really didn't think anything can top my favoured and bias opinion of all things 'mint', but I was wrong. It reminded me of Nutella, which is one thing I miss in my new(ish) life of ultimate health, so you can imagine my happiness when I discovered the closest alternative. So good!




2 Gourmet Raw's brownies
2 chopped bananas, frozen
1/2 avocado, scooped and frozen
1/2 cup cashews, soaked 2 hours
2 Tbsp cacao powder
2 Tbsp agave nectar
1 Tbsp lukuma powder

Put all the ingredients apart from the brownies into a high powered blender
[Note: add the powders last so they don't get stuck to the bottom]
Blend on high for 1 minute using a tamper or pulsing (do this quickly so the ice cream doesn't get the chance to start melting on the warming blades)
Serve immediately
[Tip: I warmed up my brownies in a dehydrator (warm oven will work well) before serving so the ice cream could melt right over them, mmmmm]

Purity Egg ingredients: cacao butter, cacao paste, agave nectar, cacao powder, carob, vanilla
Zest Egg ingredients: cacao butter, cacao paste, agave nectar, cacao powder, carob, orange oil, vanilla
After Dinner Egg ingredients: cacao butter, cacao paste, agave nectar, cacao powder, carob, mint oil, vanilla
80% Intensity Egg ingredients: cacao paste, cacao butter, agave nectar, cacao powder, cacao nibs, vanilla

The sweetest, happiest and not to forget- healthiest- Chocolate Egg idea I've been able to find all Easter! You just gotta love the gorgeous recycled egg box, that the set of four cuties come in, all individually wrapped in coloured foil to identify each flavour, set on shredded 'hay' and wrapped in a lovely ribbon and card.

An absolute joy to look at and the taste lives up to the look 100%. I loved that the eggs are solid, you get 50gm of raw chocolate in every egg, making it nice and heavy to hold and satisfying to bite in to. The peppermint was my favourite (surprise surprise if you know me!) with the zesty orange in close second. The 80% Intensity was also incredible with the chocolate being nice and creamy accompanied by crunchy cacao nib buddies.

I also love the fact that Rawr used the original recipes of their chocolate bar selection for setting the egg moulds, so even after Easter you can always be able to get your favourite flavour in a slab of chocolate!





4 RAWR's solid chocolate eggs
1 cup almond meal (pulp left from making nut milk)
1/2 ripe avocado
1/2 cup dates, pitted
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp himalayan sea salt

Grate one of the chocolate eggs (I used 80% Intensity Egg)
Gently melt it in a double boiler or a dehydrator
Process all the ingredients apart from the melted chocolate in a food processor first
Pour on the melted chocolate and process again until well combined
Line three muffin tins with cling film and load up each tin with the mixture, firmly pressing it in with your fingers
Take an egg, keeping it in the foil and press it into the middle of each muffin
Transfer to the fridge to set for an hour, pop the cakes out by the cling film and remove it
Decorate with miniature flowers or herbs
Store in the fridge and serve at any temperature

My Popple's chocolate bars is my most recent discovery online, where the natural, warm and welcoming tones of their website instantly made me want to explore their products. When the chocolate collection arrived at my door, I was over the moon to find the packaging look and feel just as they did on my screen!  That is- very cool, creative and tastefully designed.

The flavour I went for first was always going to be anything peppermint, and I just loved that Mr Popple had a combo of 'mint and lime'! I would've liked for the flavour to be more pronounced, but then again I'm the biggest critic of my mints. So the next bar I decided to sample was 'cherry aid' which surprised even me, because cherry is not something I'd ever liked combined in anything. Until now! What a delicious surprise! It just gave so much depth, flavour and texture to the chocolate, BIG thumbs up!

Euphoric Orange is a delicious bars and like the rest, being packed with superfoods- pretty much a good meal replacement. The chocs are a little grainy, so don't expect a smooth creamy melt, but this is actually a really good thing, I love that for a change. To me it just makes it obvious how much amazing superfood you are having and how close the ingredients are to their natural state, which is so hard to find these days in packaged products, even many raw food brands. I love that the bars include yacon syrup for a sweetener instead of the common agave.

Super fruit was another surprise for me. I would never go for a fruit and nut kind of bar, because I end up picking out all the raisins (just can't do raisins), and to my biggest ever delight- no raisins!! But what there was is a generous selection of the most beautiful dried fruits and berries ever- even inca berries, the taste took me all the way back to Ecuador for a moment... a really really good moment.

CHOC Chick and their famous slogan 'Love Chocolate? Make Chocolate!' have been hitting lots of press as of recently and for good reason! More and more people are discovering the amazing supercharge, superpower, super-health benefits of raw cacao and more and more people want to have a go at making their very own chocs!

"The new CHOC Chick Master kit is perfect for those who have discovered how easy making raw chocolate is and want to indulge in a range of raw chocolate recipes and share the love."

The pictured white and dark layers of chocolates are one of my creations in Seduced, using Choc Chick's cacao butter and cacao powder. You know I do love making my own chocolate and having the butter and powder as separate ingredients, I can always play with different chocolate intensities from white to milky to really dark chocolate, just by changing the proportions.

This kit has all the beautiful quality and basic ingredients you need to get started with your chocolate making and has enough in there to make around 80 individual raw chocolates or 6-8 chocolate bars (using plastic containers) and over 100 truffles! Also use it to create a bunch of recipes (included in the kit) such as raw chocolate cake, ice cream, chocolate mousse, fondue and chocolate cocktails (CHOCtails!)





1/2 cup melted cacao butter
1/2 cup cacao powder
2 Tbsp Sweet Freedom
Pinch salt
2 cups mix of dried fruits and nuts (I used- pineapple, goji berries, macadamia nuts, almonds and cacao nibs)

Gently melt the cacao butter in a double boiler or a dehydrator
Add the cacao powder and stir well
Add the sweetener and salt and stir well
Pour the chocolate mixture over the fruit and nuts in a bowl and stir
Scoop the mixture by the spoonful onto a non stick or lined tray
Transfer to the fridge to set for 15 minutes
Store in the fridge

This recipe was especially selected from my eBook Seduced-Raw Chocolate Recipes to get very excited for! How do you like it? If you do, just wait till you see another 21 creations! Available to download in seconds! More please>>


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