I’ve not been so creative in the kitchen for a long while. I got home tonight from Five Rhythm dancing and needed a snack, but as I need to be up reasonably early tommorow, I didn’t want to make chocolate. So I made something with cacao butter but no cacao powder.

• 30g cacao butter
• 2 tablespoons raw carob powder
• 1 tablespoon dark agave nectar
• 1 tablespoon ashwagandha powder
• about 5 tablespoons ground sesame seeds
• a little bit of vanilla pod, which I grated, but if I had thought earlier, I would have ground it with the sesame seeds

I think you know the method by now! Melt the cacao butter and add the rest of the ingredients, stirring all the time. Ashwagandha is a calming, relaxing herb – I want to go to sleep soon, my sleep/wake cycle is often a bit random, last night I stayed up till 5am and then took some ayahuasca and I didn’t get up until late, but I want to return to ‘normal’ for tomorrow.

On a completely unrelated note, my new favourite music which I’m listening to constantly is Maniko, the first track is my favourite, but they are all beautiful.

I just made some raw milk chocolate! It was ok, but I think the recipe needs a little bit more work. Also, I put it into the metal moulds but it didn’t set quite as firmly as the dark chocolate and therefore wouldn’t come out without a spoon! In future, I need to use the paper cases that peal off, it would have worked fine in those. (See my first raw chocolate post for a pic of the paper cases and how to melt the cacao butter if you’ve not done it before.)

Ingredients:

• 35g cacao butter
• 3 tablespoons cacao powder
• 1 tablespoon raw carob powder
• 1 tablespoon lucuma powder
• 1 tablespoon dark agave nectar
• about 50ml raw (unpasteurised) milk (I used organic goats milk)

Melt the cacao butter and stir in all the ingredients. I just added a couple of spoonfuls of powder at a time and stir it all in to make sure there are no lumps. Initially, the milk didn’t seem like it would mix, but a bit of stirring was all it needed. I put it into the moulds and put in the fridge to set.

Well, actually, I only put half into the moulds, I kept half back for more experimenting. To continue my sesame theme, I added 3 or 4 tablespoons of ground sesame seeds and another tablespoon of carob and mixed it all together. It became very thick, might be good for a topping for a cake. This tasted good, I think better than the first one.

I’ve been eating a lot of sesame seeds recently, my body must be in need of some nutrients found in them. So I tried making sesame chocolate and it worked really well (well I liked it and there’s none left now!) This chocolate is quite sweet, if you don’t like it too sweet then maybe use a little less of the sweetners (carob, lucuma or agave).
Ingredients:

• 45g cacao butter
• 3 tablespoons cacao powder
• 2 tablespoons carob powder
• 1 tablespoon lucuma powder
• 1 tablespoon dark agave nectar
• 4 tablespoons ground sesame seeds

First I melted the cacao butter (see my previous raw chocolate making post for details) and slowly stired in the ingredients. I added the ground sesame last, not sure if this makes a difference but if added earlier it might make it harder for the other ingredients to mix in well. And that’s about it. I put it into the moulds (more on those soon) and into the fridge to set. It wasn’t as smooth as some of the previous chocolate I’ve made due to the sesame still being quite coarse. It would be interesting to try with tahini, not sure if it work or not.

(I’ll be making raw chocolate as part of my workshop in London on Jan 27th…)

Made a delicious salad last night so I thought I’d share:

• 1 avocado, chopped
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 1/2 yellow pepper, grated
• 1/2 carrot, grated
• parmesan cheese, grated
• wild greens including wild garlic, chopped

• 30g sea spaghetti, soaked for 20 mins
• 2 tablespoons of flax oil
• 3 tablespoons sesame seeds

So, I mixed the first group of ingredients together. Then I ground the sesame seeds in the seed mill on my blender and mixed with the sea spaghetti, flax oil and some of the soak water from the sea spaghetti and then stirred this into the salad.

I was really in the mood for sesame seeds last night and had more in my desert. I attempted a halva recipe, I ground up 6 tablespoons of sesame seeds and mixed in a couple of tablespoons of dark raw agave nectar. It tasted ok, but it wasn’t halva! I’ve just started using agave and it’s amazing, sweet and syrupy, like nothing I’ve had raw before! I like to just spread it on bananas, I’ll have to be careful how quickly I’m getting through it.

If you have raw tahini, that would probably work better than the ground sesame in both recipes, I just don’t have any.

Today my chocolate pudding was particularly good, very creamy, so I thought I’d share what went in it:

• about 100g hemp seeds, soaked overnight
• dried fruit soaked overnight: small handful of goji berries and currents, 1 fig, 1 apricot, 1 prune
• 2 tablespoons of cacao nibs
• 3 tablespoons sesame seeds
• 1 tsp pollen grains
• 1 tsp coconut oil
  
• 1 tsp cacao powder
• 1/2 tsp maca powder
• 5 walnut halves
• 2 bananas

I’m not going to type out the method again, just look at one of my previous chocolate pudding posts, the only thing I did differently was that I ground up the cacao nibs, sesame seeds and walnuts on their own first (in my Vitamix Blender) before adding everything else.