Last month I went on a yoga retreat that was also meant to be a detox weekend. The food was not really detox for me, as it was fairly similar to how I eat at home, bar the lack of cheese and gluten. However, we did have some delicious chocolate balls as dessert one evening; they were yummy and apparently semi-virtuous as they had no sugar and were instead sweetened with dates. Now, I personally don't like most dry fruit (and dates in particular kind of freak me out, I think they look like bugs!) but it must be the texture rather than the flavour, as in this case the dates are mashed up and give the dark chocolate a lovely sweetness.
I got a rough recipe from the retreat teacher, and then looked all over the internet for something more specific, and today I finally decided to give them a go, by amalgamating bits and pieces from the different recipes I found. (Note that when I say cup, I mean small mug.)
Base recipe:
1 cup of dates
1 cup of ground almonds
2.5 tablespoons of cocoa (I used Green and Blacks)
Place all the ingredients in a blender and blitz until the dates are completely broken down and the mixture has an even consistency. This was one of those occasions when I wished I had a food processor rather than a hand blender, as this made quite the mess in the kitchen. But I promise, it is doable!
I thought it looked a little dry at that point so I added a splash of almond milk, although any liquid would probably do.
To make cocoa-orange chocolate balls, add the zest of half an orange to half the base mixture. Then roll into balls (around one teaspoon of mixture per ball). This will make around 10 cocoa-orange chocolate balls.
To make coconut chocolate balls, roll the rest of the mixture into balls (again, around one teaspoon of mixture per ball) and roll each ball onto desiccated coconut. As above, this will make around 10 coconut chocolate balls.
These will then need to sit in the fridge for a bit to solidify a little more, and then you can eat them, yay! The texture is almost like raw cookie dough weirdly (kind of soft and cheewy), which is probably another reason I liked them so much. For me, these are sweet enough, although the other half said they could have been sweeter. I guess if you do try them you can experiment a little with the amount of dates added.
I got a rough recipe from the retreat teacher, and then looked all over the internet for something more specific, and today I finally decided to give them a go, by amalgamating bits and pieces from the different recipes I found. (Note that when I say cup, I mean small mug.)
Base recipe:
1 cup of dates
1 cup of ground almonds
2.5 tablespoons of cocoa (I used Green and Blacks)
Place all the ingredients in a blender and blitz until the dates are completely broken down and the mixture has an even consistency. This was one of those occasions when I wished I had a food processor rather than a hand blender, as this made quite the mess in the kitchen. But I promise, it is doable!
I thought it looked a little dry at that point so I added a splash of almond milk, although any liquid would probably do.
To make cocoa-orange chocolate balls, add the zest of half an orange to half the base mixture. Then roll into balls (around one teaspoon of mixture per ball). This will make around 10 cocoa-orange chocolate balls.
To make coconut chocolate balls, roll the rest of the mixture into balls (again, around one teaspoon of mixture per ball) and roll each ball onto desiccated coconut. As above, this will make around 10 coconut chocolate balls.
These will then need to sit in the fridge for a bit to solidify a little more, and then you can eat them, yay! The texture is almost like raw cookie dough weirdly (kind of soft and cheewy), which is probably another reason I liked them so much. For me, these are sweet enough, although the other half said they could have been sweeter. I guess if you do try them you can experiment a little with the amount of dates added.
.JPG) |
| Cocoa-orange in the back, coconut in the front. And yes, some are missing! |
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