Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been experimenting with making raw chocolates, today I actually measured the ingredients so I could tell you what I did and can improve for next time.

Ingredients for the chocolate:

• 50g cacao butter
• 3 tablespoons cacao powder
• 2 tablespoons lucuma powder

Flavourings:

• currants
• hazelnuts
• cacao nibs
• pollen grains

Method:

First I melted the cacao butter. I grated it to make it easier to melt, placed in in a dish and then placed this dish in a larger bowl of nearly boiling water. I had to change the hot water several times as it cooled. (Another way of doing this is with a double boiler on a stove, but I don’t have one of those yet.)  When the cacao butter had completely liquefied I added the cacao powder and lucuma, a tablespoon at a time, stirring it in until dissolved.

I then poured the liquid chocolate into moulds and then added the flavourings.  I’m guessing that there is an optimal time to wait before adding stuff, otherwise it all sinks to the bottom.  I ground the hazelnuts up first and did a hazelnut and current flavour.  Once the chocs were made, I put them in the fridge to set before eating.
Next time I will try using more cacao powder, and probably more lucuma also.  The chocolates with currents were great because the currents were an additional sweetener, the others could have been a little sweeter.

I also tried making a chocolate coated Brazil nut, but will have to work on a method of getting an even coat!

We have a pear tree in the garden so I’ve had lots of ripe pears recently. Yesterday I made a pear crumble:

For the topping I used hazelnuts, soaked sunflower seeds, soaked pumpkin seeds, soaked sesame seeds, dates and a few cacao nibs. I put everything into a food processor and processed until a good crumble topping formed.

For the filling, I chopped the pears and put in to the food processor with a few tablespoons of lucuma powder. I processed on pulse briefly so that the mixture was still a little chunky.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may know that I have chocolate pudding for breakfast everyday. Well, today I fancied a change and made white chocolate pudding.

The following ingredients are soaked overnight:

• 1 cup hemp seeds
• half a cup mixture of walnuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds
• handful of goji berries, handful of currents, 2 dried figs, 2 dried apricots

The rest of the ingredients:

• 2 bananas
• a small piece of coconut meat
• 1 tsp coconut oil
• orange zest
• 2 tablespoons of raw cacao butter
• 1/2 tsp maca powder

First, drain and rinse the hemp seeds and then blend with the soak water from the dried fruit and a bit more water. Strain through a muslin bag or cheesecloth to make hemp milk. Then put all the rest of the ingredients in the blender (drain and rinse the nuts and seeds first) along with the hemp milk and blend until smooth. I usually stir in a tablespoon of flax oil for my omega 3’s before serving. Mmm, delicious.

I expanded the mushroom sauce recipe from a couple of days ago and did this:

• a large handful of mushrooms
• approx 30g of sea spaghetti, soaked for 20 mins
• half a red pepper
• a spring onion
• an avocado
• small piece of chili

I put everything including the soak water into the blender and blended until smooth. I served with mixed wild greens and grated carrot.

A bit later I made a very simple chocolate hemp milk drink:

• a cup of hemp seeds, soaked and drained
• 7 dates, soaked for about 1 hour
• a teaspoon of raw chocolate powder

I made hemp milk with the hemp seeds and the soak water from the dates (blend and then strain, I use a sprout bag to strain the hemp milk through). Then put the hemp milk back into the blender with the dates and choc powder and blend until you have a smooth chocolate milk.

Mmm, just made a delicious mushroom sauce which reminded me of the cooked mushroom sauce my mum used to make:

• 1 avocado
• a handful of mushrooms
• about 20g of sea spaghetti, soaked for 20 mins

Chuck it all in the blender, including the soak water and blend. I served it with a large plate of wild greens (what else!) with some spring onion chopped up and mixed in.

Wow, the festival was amazing. So many wonderful people all in the same place. It was hard work for me at times but from the response I think it was worth it! Hopefully some people will send me some photos soon…

We’ve just started Sea Spaghetti at Funky Raw which I am so pleased about.  It’s my favourite type of seaweed and I used to eat it all the time when I lived in Spain but I’ve never found it over here so I imported my own. So this is what I made for dinner last night:

• 2 tomatoes
• 1 carrot
• a few pieces of broccoli
• about 10g of Sea Spaghetti soaked for 30 mins
• a load of wild greens
• 1 spring onion
• a couple of mushrooms
• a small piece of ginger
• a small piece of fresh chili
• water

I chopped the veg then put everything (including the soak water from the seaweed) into my blender and blended. As usual, I stirred in a tablespoon of flax oil before I ate. Delicious, and amazingly enough for me, a meal without an avocado!

Ok, here’s what I ate yesterday, all times are very approximate:

9am – a mango and about 250 grams of Lychees
11am – a banana and then chocolate pudding
afternoon – another banana or two, a large handful of figs
6pm – a Whoosh bar
7:30pm – green soup (recipe below)
11pm – sesame, banana and currant desert (recipe below)

So, eating at 11pm is not really to be recommended but sometimes that’s just how my day works out.

To make my soup, I blended the following with some water:

• 2 sticks of celery
• lots of wild greens (100g or more)
• small bowl of laver seaweed, with soak water
• 1 small avocado
• a few basil leaves
• a bit of chili and ginger
• ground coriander seeds and cardamon pod

I grated some parmesan cheese on top and stirred in some flax oil.

Maybe not the most exciting soup I’ve ever made, but I liked it!

To make the sesame desert, I first soaked some currants for about 6 hours. I then put the following into the grinder.

• 4 tablespoons of sesame seeds
• 2 tablespoons of flax seeds
• 1 tablespoon of raw cacao nibs

I ground all that up then put it in a bowl with a banana and the soak water from the currants and mashed it all up. I then stirred in the currants. Delicious.

Went to the raw buffet at Spirited Palace last night, was great, so many people doing raw now. I was getting asked quite a bit what I eat so I’ll try and do some full food diaries. Today I ate: (all times very approximate)

• 10:30am – 2 bananas
• 12:30pm – 2 mangos
• 2pm – 1 banana and then chocolate pudding (not exactly as in this recipe)
• 6pm – a handful of figs
• 8pm – salad (recipe below)
• 9:30pm – chocolate desert (recipe below)

Sweetcorn and Tomato Sauce

• corn cut from one cob
• 2 tomatoes
• 4 basil leaves
• small piece of red onion
• small piece of fresh chili
• small piece of fresh ginger
• coriander seeds and flax seeds, ground

Blend! I served this over a large plate of wild greens (between 100 and 150 grams of greens), some hemp greens, a bit of broccoli and some tiny yellow courgettes I got from the farmers market this morning. I then grated some parmesan cheese on top and a drizzle of flax oil.

Chocolate Desert

This was an experiment, I was just playing around to see what I could make so all quantities are very approximate:

I first put the following in the grinder bit of my blender:

• 5 tablespoons of sesame seeds
• 2 tablespoons of raw cacao nibs
• 8 hazelnuts

I ground this up quite finely then added 4 or 5 dates and processed a bit more. I pit this in a dish and then added a couple of teaspoons of raw chocolate powder and 50ml of coconut oil and mashed it up with a fork.

It was delicious.

I’ve had raw green soup every day since I got my blender until today when I became suddenly inspired and wanted to make an exciting dinner for myself. Before I knew what was happening, I was in the shop buying pine nuts. I’ve got several pots of basil on my window sill which is great. Two different types as well, one is “Monsterous Basil” which really does have massive leaves but is not quite as strong tasting and then I have the more usual basil which is extremly delicious.

Pesto

The great thing about pesto is that it is supposed to be raw, so no compromises have to be made. Even the cheese generally used, parmesan, is usually raw. So, this is what I used:

• Fresh basil, probably about 25 grams
• Pine nuts, about 40g
• 1/4 of a smallish red onion
• Parmesan, about 30g
• flax oil, 50ml

I used the “mill” attachment on my blender, but if you’ve got a food processor that would probably be the best tool for the job. I started out with just the pine nuts and ground them up a bit, then added the basil, a bit at a time, then the onion and grated cheese. When it was looking quite smooth, I stirred in the flax oil.

Salsa

I then decided to make a tomato salsa:

• 4 tomatoes
• 2 sticks of celery
• 1/4 red onion
• a couple of slices of fresh ginger
• some fresh chili (also from my windowsill garden!)

Everything went into the blender, fairly simple.

I served both the pesto and salsa with a big mixed green salad – malva, jack by the hedge, nasturtium, watercress, spinach and rocket. The pesto was great, the salsa was reasonable, but they really didn’t go together in the same meal, so I ended up eating the salsa more as soup and having the pesto with the greens which was very good.

Banana and Sesame Pudding

Yep, I still had room for pudding so I made what is quickly becoming a favourite – banana and sesame pudding. First I grind about 40g sesame seeds and 10g cacao nibs (in a seeds mill or coffee grinder). I then mash this mixture with a banana and a teaspoon of raw cacao powder. And that’s it. Very quick and simple to make and delicious.

Festival

So that’s it for food today. I’m currently very busy organising the Funky Raw festival. We’re going back to Keveral farm, August 8 to 13 for raw food, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, lots of music and dancing… basically lots of fun, come and join us.

Well, there is so much happening at the moment and I’m not getting chance to tell you all about it! Jess has just launched her new online shop Total Raw Food and next to her link to this site it says “Find out what Rob had for his tea last night”, and I’ve not even been doing that recently, so I’m going to try harder.

Todays initially exciting news was that I finally bought myself a blender, but the excitement didn’t last long because it’s not a Vitamix, it’s a £25 Philips Cucina from Argos and frankly, it’s not very good 😉 I don’t really know what I was expecting for that money, and it did make me chocolate pudding so life’s not too bad.

I made a soup for dinner and this is what I put in it:

• 3 tomatoes
• 4 or 5 mushrooms
• 2 small avocados
• a load of wild greens (fat hen, chickweed, sow thistle, malva, jack by the hedge)
• hemp greens (hemp seeds grown for about a week, with a few small leaves)
• a couple of onion greens (from the garden, I’m sure spring onion would work if you don’t have this)
• a handful of sprouted fenugreek seeds
• 1 green cardamon pod
• a teaspoon of coriander seeds
• a teaspoon of cumin powder
• a bit of fresh chili (which came from a plant on my windowsill)
• and quite a bit of water to get it to blend properly

There was a lot more faffing about than with a Vitamix, I kept having to stop and stir, although I think it was the amount of water I used in the end which made it work. Just before serving I added a couple of tablespoons of flax oil and some grated organic unpasteurised cheddar. I find this kind of soup with wild greens can be a bit hit and miss, but this was wonderful, I think there are a particularly good selection of wild greens available right now.