One day along the raw food path, you discover demon Chocolate has left you. Oh Happy Day!
It not longer sits on your left shoulder babbling Dark Thoughts of Gluttony. It’s gone to find a weaker cooked-food shoulder to cry on.
In the late 80’s I ate two large slabs of Cadbury’s every day when I sat down to my computer. Today I can’t stand the taste of factory-made chocolate.
Chocolate Falls Away!
Susie Miller and Karen Knowler write in Feel-Good Food (#ad):
“We were amazed by our effortless ability to lose our well-entrenched chocolate addictions, but in time, after eating a high raw diet, we came to find that it genuinely didn’t taste good any more!”
“After the initial two seconds’ taste explosion we both grew to really dislike the aftertaste of chocolate and how we felt for hours after eating it.”
Yeah, right, I thought. That will never happen to me. In the first years of healing my unbearable tooth-aches (from 1992 to 1995) I ate cashew-date crunch instead of chocolate (see recipe here). When the toothaches ended, chocolate crept back in.
Up to December 2005, I bought chocolate every week I went shopping. Over 13 years I’d reached a steady 95% raw foods, but the other 5% was whatever I felt like. Usually pizza, chips and chocolate on a Friday evening.
Mainly because I could not bear to spend one minute in a kitchen preparing anything. You want a break! I never wanted pizza, I just wanted something tasting good. Where I live at the bottom of Africa, there’s no wholefood take-aways.
New Year Resolution
On January 1, 2005 a new friendship motivated me to give up sugar and white flour for my New Year resolution.
I lasted six months! My friend Ishara asked: “Is it very hard?” I replied: “Not really, I was ready for it. Five years ago it would’ve been impossible.”
On 95% raw you’re ready for those last few steps. Then in late June of that year, I got wrung through six days of intensive training for a high performance team. On the plane coming home, I was so hungry I ate the roll and dead veggies. Thus ended my new year resolution.
What did I discover? Today I can’t stand the taste of chocolate! Nor pizza, nor chips (crisps in UK). I simply can’t buy them. Six months without was all it needed to whisk them away forever.
Benefits of Raw Chocolate
No doubt you’ve read what the scientists are saying — milk-free dark chocolate is good for you. Cocoa beans contain flavonoids which are powerful anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatories, present in many fruits and vegetables, green tea and red wine.
Flavonoids protect us from free radicals that damage blood vessels. Tests show that cocoa flavonoids reduce blood pressure and blood-clotting, make arteries more flexible, and decrease low-density-lipoprotein (LDL, the bad cholesterol).
In August 2003, the science journal Nature reported an Italian study where subjects ate dark chocolate bars. The anti-oxidant potential measured in their blood increased by 18% and remained elevated for three hours.
This is not so with milk chocolate. They think anti-oxidants become bound to milk proteins which retard absorption.
I always ask myself, “who paid for the research?” Bet it was a chocolate company. What of all the trans fats, saturated fats and sugar in their fancy dark chocolate?
Do you believe chocolate binges will ward off a heart attack? Rigorous studies into whether antioxidant pills such as vitamins A, C and E will prevent heart attacks, have shown them to be useless.
The best source of anti-oxidants is fresh living leafy greens from your sprouter or garden. Greens make anti-oxidants en masse to protect themselves from all the oxygen they merrily produce.
Chocolate & Sex
Chocolate bars that will help men and women reach orgasm are on the way. Perhaps they’re in your local store today?
In May 2004 sex expert Dr Trudy Barber told the European Federation of Sexology Conference in Brighton that the chocolates could be available by 2010.
They will contain higher-than-normal levels of the chemical phenyl ethylamine, which our body releases during sex.
Today’s chocolates around the world have up to 660 mg of phenyl ethylamine. It’s related to dopamine and adrenalin — body chemicals that heighten our body’s physical sensations.
The new chocolates will have far higher levels of p.e., which triggers an orgasm-like high without the need for sex. Or so says the good Dr Trudy. I’ll take making love with the one I love, over chocolate any day.
Now if we combine chocolate sauce with making love… whoops…
Cacao also releases the happy chemical serotonin in your brain. 90% of your brain’s serotonin is made by your gut bacteria, so you want to clean & repopulate your colon!
Why Home-made Chocolate
These raw chocolate recipes are for chocaholics who, like me, dislike both carob and factory-made chocolate.
Chocolate powder is roasted, or nowadays we can buy expensive raw cacao powder. Does roasted matter when the rest of the recipe is raw? Not to me. My teeth continued to heal so long as I made my own chocolate at home, and worsened when I bought the factory chocolate.
Even sugar-free tofu-based chocolate hurt my teeth. It’s the machine. If food has been through a machine in a factory, it’s toxic. Only kitchen appliances in your own home will process your food safely. See here how enzymes work.
I hope you invest in rawfood kitchen appliances. My favorite is the GoGreen Automatic Sprouter giving me lovely fresh organic greens daily.
You WILL get free of pain and lose weight with RAW foods!
Raw Chocolate Mousse
Thank you to Jennifer Cornbleet for permission to print 3 recipes — chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, and brownies — from her book Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 People (© Book Publishing Co, 2005) (#ad). It’s the easiest simplest raw recipe book ever. You will love it.
No one will know that avocado replaces butter, cream, and eggs in this silky mousse.
- 1/4 cup pitted medjool dates, soaked
- 1/4 cup pure maple syrup or raw honey
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup mashed avocados (1+1/2 avocados)
- 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa or carob powder
- 1/4 cup water
Blend dates, maple syrup and vanilla in a food processor until smooth. Add avocado and cocoa powder, process until creamy. Add the water and process briefly. Stored in a sealed container, Mousse will keep for three days in refrigerator or two weeks in freezer. Yields 1 cup, increase amounts for more.
A cheap and low-fat chocolate wobbly is to use tofu — not raw, but it is a transitional food, print out my revised Ann Wigmore Chart of Living Foods, Whole Foods and Avoid Altogether Foods. I found it invaluable during my transition period.
- 1 lb silken tofu
- 2 Tbsp cocoa powder
- 1/4 tsp natural salt
- 6 Tbsp maple syrup, or your sweetener of choice (tastes horrid with honey!)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Blend all together.
Raw Chocolate Cake
This decadent dessert will delight chocolate lovers.
- 1+1/2 cups raw walnuts, unsoaked
- Dash salt
- 12 pitted medjool dates, unsoaked
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa or carob powder
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons water
- 1/2 cup fresh raspberries for garnish (optional)
Blend walnuts and salt in a food processor until finely ground. Add dates, cocoa powder and vanilla, process until mixture begins to stick together. Add the water and process briefly.
Transfer to a serving plate and form into a 5-inch round cake. Chill for 2 hours. Decorate the cake and plate with fresh raspberries before serving, if desired. Covered with plastic wrap, Cake will keep for three days in refrigerator or two weeks in freezer. Yields one 5-inch cake, increase amounts for more.
Raw Chocolate Brownies
Jenny thanks rawfood chef Elaina Love for this recipe, adapted from her Black Forest Cherry Brownies.
Ingredients same as Chocolate Cake, EXCEPT first chop 1/4 cup of the walnuts and set aside. The 2 tsp water is optional, makes moister brownie.
- After food processor, transfer to a mixing bowl, add the chopped walnuts and mix well using hands.
- Pack mixture firmly into square container. Chill for 2 hours.
Raw Chocolate Chunks
I invented this recipe to replace slabs of chocolate. The secret to good chocolate is raw coconut oil and some cashews (both give a creamy taste), dates and salt.
- 8 oz (250g) dried dates
- 1 cup fine desiccated (dried) coconut
- 1 cup almonds
- 1/2 cup cashews
- 5 Tbsp chocolate powder
- 1/4 tsp natural salt like Himalayan Crystal salt, or a little less
- 4-5 Tbsp raw coconut oil
- 3 Tbsp raw honey
If coconut oil is solid, scoop out 5 Tbsp into a cup which is standing in a container of boiling hot water, so the oil melts into liquid. Chop up dates and grind with coconut in food processor. Grind unsoaked almonds and cashews in coffee-nut grinder, to a fine grind. Add all ingredients (almonds, cashews, choc powder, salt, oil, honey) to the food processor with coconut-dates and grind again.
Press down into one-inch high food containers with lids. Leave a “moat” around each batch, that’s a space between chocolate and inside wall of container. Refrigerate. The next day cut into small squares, the moat gives you space for them to spread out in container. Store in refrigerator.
The less oil you use, the more crumbly the chocolate. I like my chocolate bars to stick together so I use 5 heaped Tbsp oil. For chopped nuts in your chocolate, add them at the end. Or grind almonds and cashews to crunchy in the food processor, don’t grind them first in coffee grinder.
Dried coconut in all stores is pasteurized. The ideal is to dry raw coconuts at home. I find that home-made chocolate, even with pasteurized coconut, is so much healthier than any machine-made chocolate, that the pasteurized coconut does not matter.
Your teeth get stronger with the calcium in this home-made chocolate. Plus it’s wholefood raw sugar that will never leach minerals from your teeth and bones. I don’t trust even the non-dairy tofu chocolate in the stores, though I’m grateful it’s there to help break our addiction to cow-milk.
Recipe for drying coconut at home is here under dehydrating.
Raw Chocolate Smoothie
No need to suck on a cow’s udder for this delicious choc-mint milkshake!
See recipe in Essential Fat Recipes.
Raw Chocolate Sauce
This is my favorite dessert — home-made vegan yogurt with chocolate sauce!
For the sauce:
- 3/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup chocolate powder
- 1/2 cup Rapadura Whole Organic Sugar
- 1/8 tsp natural salt
- 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
Blend all ingredients, then add 3 Tbsp brown rice syrup (not blended) to thicken it into sauce. I know this is sweet but hey, it’s only a topping!
For the yogurt, see recipe in my Essential Fat recipes.
Lemon Meringue Pudding
Oh dear, I’m on a roll here, I can’t resist this one though it’s got nothing to do with chocolate!
Eat as is, or freeze into ice cream. You may want to try it with a healthier sweetener, e.g. dates? Blend together:
- 3 bananas
- 2 Tbsp fine desiccated (dried) coconut
- 1/2 fresh lemon
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 3-4 Tbsp brown rice syrup or maple syrup
Discover More
- Recipes for Fat Free Raw Desserts & Raw Candy
- Energy Soup Recipe — to save you from chocolate!
- Download Free eBooks – to go raw for 6 days, and plant-strong for 6 weeks — everything you need to know, to quickly shift into healthy eating
- Blending Links — see all info on Blending
- Site Map — see the whole feast 🙂