‘Raw’ white chocolate raspberry hearts

Adapted from: http://www.healthysupplies.co.uk/raw-white-chocolates-snow-blossoms.html

I found this recipe on the website ‘healthy supplies’, which is where I buy all my freeze-dried fruit and various other exciting things. They call these chocolates ‘Snow blossoms’, which is beautiful if a little pretentious, but too similar to my fennel and pink pepper white chocolates, which really did look like blossom on a tree. These little things are definitely stunning – my rubbish phone photo doesn’t really do them justice.

I don’t really think that eating an entirely raw diet is the most necessary or practical of choices – we evolved to eat cooked food a very very long time ago. BUT, on the subject of chocolate, and a lot of other dessert-y things, it is a very good idea.

I love chocolate, both eating it and messing about with it, but raw chocolate is something else entirely. It is intense, sometimes bitter, and known to cause the occasional ‘braingasm’. It also contains no dairy, rubbish e-numbers, strange preservatives, or refined sugar. When I am on my period, I have found that one little Booja Booja Raspberry Ecuadorian Truffle has the same effect as about 200g of Cadburys Dairy Milk.

These chocolates are not bitter at all as they contain only cacao butter, not cacao powder. I’m not usually a ‘heart-shaped’ kind of person, being far too cynical. But the heart shaped silicone chocolate moulds where the cheapest to buy on Amazon, and so the raw white chocolate raspberry heart was born. 

This mixture made exactly enough to fill my 15-heart chocolate mould

Ingredients:

50g Cacao Butter, grated. Cacao butter is magical stuff – after grating it I didn’t know whether or not to wash my hands or rub the buttery residue into them! You can buy it online or in health food shops.

50g finely ground unroasted cashews. Grind them using a food processor, coffee grinder or mortar and pestle.

2 tbsp agave syrup (use a little more or a little less, depending on how sweet you want them to be).

2 tsp Lucuma Powder. Lucuma is a Peruvian ‘superfood’, which tastes a little bit like cookie. You can buy it online or in health food shops.

1 tsp vanilla extract (I didn’t use this because I don’t like vanilla, it would make them taste much more like white chocolate though)

approx 10g freeze-dried raspberry powder, or with another freeze-dried fruit powder.

Method:

Make sure that your mould is completely dry. Use a teaspoon, or the tip of the handle of a teaspoon to put a tiny amount of the raspberry powder in each heart of the mould – I tried to keep the raspberry in one side, for aesthetic reasons. And then accidentally knocked it with my elbow so it went everywhere.

Melt the Cacao Butter in a heatproof bowl placed into a saucepan of simmering water - make sure the water does not touch the base of the bowl.

Once melted, remove the bowl from the heat – it can help if you put a tea towel between the bowl and your work-surface. Add the lucuma powder, agave syrup, vanilla extract if using and ground cashews nuts and stir well.

Now pour or spoon the white chocolate mix carefully into each of the hearts. Once you have finished tap the sides to help any trapped air bubbles rise to the surface. Set aside to cool on a flat surface or in the freezer – these chocolates will take longer to solidify than dark raw chocolates because of the high proportion of Cacao Butter.

Store them in an airtight container somewhere cool or in the fridge.