Ferrero Raw-chers

Valentine's day is coming, so the world is full of devilishly chocolate cakes and heart shaped boxes of sweets. And there's nothing wrong with that (seriously, take a look at the rest of the blog, chocolate is my bread and butter. As well as actual bread and butter). But since there's plenty of that chocolate indulgence around at the minute, I thought I would do something a little different.

I am obsessed with Ferrero rochers. Over the festive period I was mainlining these things. My record is 8 in a row, and I could have gone on, but the towering pile of empty wrappers was getting a little embarrassing.

New year, new leaf and all that, so I thought I’d fiddle around and make a healthier version. These are pretty delicious and the great thing is you can make a batch, freeze them, and have a treat ready for whenever the sweet tooth hits (which lets face it, is always)!

Now, you know I can’t lie to my blog. They don’t taste quite as good as the original,  BUT they are surprisingly really tasty, super duper easy, take about 5 minutes to make, and are better for you! Probably my favourite "raw" things I've made so far!

Coconut Flour Brownies

The American system has come to my rescue, because my scales have run out of battery! So this recipe is in cups.

Part of this healthy eating kick is exploring a new variety of cooking. I’m not so much a fan of veggies, and I find them kind of boring. So I’m branching out into “raw” and cleaner baked goods. I spotted some coconut flour in Asda on my last shop, and I had to have it! I was a bit worried because the flour packet was teeny and expensive, but upon reading up on it, you need to use a lot less coconut flour than regular flour. That’s because it is very good at soaking up the wet parts of your recipe, so you need about a third of the amount of coconut flour that you’d normally use.

The thing that sold me was the recipe on the back of the box for pancakes! Pancakes are the ultimate breakfast food for me. Recipe coming soon.. I love pancakes so much..

This is my second time ever baking with coconut flour, so I slightly overdid the flour in this recipe because I got nervous to use too little. Therefore, I’ve adapted the final written recipe accordingly so you can get the correct fudgy texture. I went with mint chocolate (my FAVE), but if you don’t want that, just sub in plain chocolate. The coconut flour isn’t overpoweringly coconutty, so the mint doesn’t clash, but this could be awesome with coconut flour and added desiccated coconut.

"Raw" Coconutty "Snickers" Traybakes

Oh dear me. I don’t really know how I found myself down this rabbit hole of blitzing dates in a food processor on the instruction of a recipe for which “blended dates” is a synonym for “caramel”.

Anyway. I had a brief foray into the world of clean treats when I made sweet potato brownies. And then I forgot all about it. And then I started this “healthier” eating kick, and of course my first step was to bookmark a million recipes.

The whole raw food concept is interesting to me. It’s an odd phenomenon, people who can’t or choose not to eat processed, pre-packed food like chocolate bars, but who try to recreate the taste in a more wholesome way. Of course, this still has sugar and calories and is still very much a “treat,” but doesn’t have lots of additives and un-natural-ness.

I’m not going to lie. I’m sceptical about it. Sometimes I think the people who make these things haven’t had a bar of proper chocolate in so long that they kind of forget what it tastes like. Make no mistake, a snickers bar is an incredible and delicious thing (and don’t even get me started on the hazelnut version!). And this version, while definitely not a snickers, has its own sweet, nutty, chewey, crunchy appeal.  I think these raw treats are let down by comparisons, and we should just let them be their own weird little nutty-fruity thing.

One thing that I’ve noticed with all the raw recipes is that you won’t really get away without a food processor. I couldn’t get through 48 hours without mine, but if you don’t have one, you really should consider it. I even have two – a regular sized one and a little tiny one, for chopping tiny things!