When I was younger, all I knew about mulberries was the nursery rhyme “Here we go round the mulberry bush”, and even that was wrong, mulberries grow on trees! It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I tasted my first mulberry, when I was in Sicily. It was a fresh white one, and I love it. I then tried black ones and loved those too.
I’ve since found that you can grow mulberries in the UK, at least in the south, although they are a lot more common in the Mediterranean.
Mulberries are great nutritionally, they are high in vitamin C, magnesium, iron and some B vitamins, plus they contain the antioxidant resveratrol which may have health benefits, lots of studies are been done on it.
While fresh mulberries are amazing and are one of my favourite fruits, they are only available for a couple of months in the summer, but dried mulberries are available all the time and amazing for making all sorts of sweet recipes. I particularly like to use them to make raw cake bases along with walnuts or other nuts.
Mulberries go really well with chocolate, here’s my recipe:
40g cacao paste
25g cacao butter
15g coconut butter
45g dried mulberries, ground
35g lucuma powder
20g carob powder
½ teaspoon raw honey (optional)
1 tsp vanilla powder (optional, but really improves the flavour)
(Note, if you prefer to use cacao powder rather than paste, you can use approx 20g cacao powder and change to 45g cacao butter.)
The first step is to grind the mulberries. I did this in my Vitamix, although a coffee grinder might also work. I did it in small batches as they get sticky and clump together – don’t grind for too long as this makes them stick back together. I then put them through a sieve to remove the larger chunks.
Melt the cacao butter, cacao paste and coconut butter gently (I use a bowl in a pan of warm water). Once it is all liquid, slowly stir in the rest of the ingredients. You want the consistency to be fairly stiff, if it seems too liquid, add a little more lucuma, carob or mulberries.
Pour into moulds and put in the fridge to set. The chocolate is slightly chewy, not smooth, hope you like it.
