Healthy Chocolate Sauce!
About a year ago, I fell in love with Artisana Cacao Bliss. However, my wallet was not so smitten: $11 for an 8-oz jar? In the interest of saving money, I vowed to attempt making my own Cacao Bliss… it turned out even better than I’d hoped!
Healthy Chocolate Sauce or Hot Chocolate Butter
- 4 tablespoons (60g) virgin coconut oil
- 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon (52g) cocoa powder. (For a sauce, decrease to 1/4 cup)
- 1/4 cup agave OR you can use nunaturals vanilla stevia drops (I use 10 vanilla drops, but if you don’t like super-bitter chocolate, triple that amount)
Melt the coconut oil, either in the microwave or on a candle warmer or in a warm oven. Add the vanilla drops (or agave) and stir. Add the cocoa, then add 3 tablespoons water only if you used vanilla drops. Stir stir stir! Stir until it gets thick like Artisana Cacao Bliss.
For Magic Shell or Healthy Chocolate Sauce:
Decrease cocoa powder to 1/4 cup and keep all other measurements the same. Also, if you re-heat it for a few seconds, it’ll get thinner. And if you freeze it, you can make incredible chocolate bars… or even chocolate chips! Just break up the chocolate bars into little pieces.
I used this spread to frost my Cream Filled Chocolate Cupcakes.
Nutrition Information (for 2 tbsp)
- 100 calories
- 10 grams fat
- 0 grams added sugars
- 0 grams cholesterol
- 2 grams protein
- 3.6g dietary fiber
Or, if you make the recipe into bars, each 30g bar will have 100 calories (stevia version) or 140 calories (agave version). They also have 11% of the RDA for iron and are very high in manganese as well.
Side Note: This is also good on Homemade Luna Bars.
I have not tried to recreate anything, but I am planning on making my first smoothie soon to mimic one from Starbucks that I like. 🙂
Last night I actually wanted to make my own vegan taco filling, instead of buying the pre-packaged Smartground Mexican Style stuff. Since I didn’t want to go shopping, I had to improvise with what was on hand in the kitchen. I mashed together pinto beans, silken firm tofu, cauliflower, tomato paste, chili powder, cumin seeds, paprika, and a little salt and pepper. Cooked in a pan on the stove till it started to brown a little bit. It turned out absolutely amazing and I will never buy the pre-made stuff ever again!
I’m sure we’ve all had those disastrous (and pleasant) experiences in the kitchen trying to recreate our favorite dishes. To me, however, the most pronounced of these ventures is the desire to recreate serving sizes and the general processed appearance of food that we see in most advertisements and in chain restaurants. The issue here is that the appearances of these products is created in the use of thousands of synthetic chemicals (see http://photocritic.org/food-photo-tricks/ for examples… motor oil!). I’m still in high school, but even having taken some basic Foods courses in middle school, I’ve had the opportunity to become more aware of the realities of nutrition. One of the very first recipes I made was muffins: my entire class learned that the mountainous, peaked-cap appearance we’d grown to associate with store-bought muffins actually meant that the muffin had been over-mixed. The muffins we made were small, tiny enough to cup in the palm of a tween-age hand, as opposed to the gargantuan cake-muffin monsters that Costco has made popular. The same thing applies to serving sizes: just because a restaurant shows dishes upon dishes of food doesn’t mean that it’s indicative of what a healthy meal should look like. Our experiences in recreation are based largely on our sensory perception of food. I think that if we learn to savor the natural flavors of healthful food, we’ll be a lot healthier as a society. Take a look at your recipe for chocolate butter! All-natural, no preservatives, and packed with healthful nutrition. There is such a thing as healthy “packaged” food (like this coconut oil, agave syrup, etc, etc, etc – in moderation, of course), and learning to embrace it alongside local, organic, and vegan ingredients is what has been the biggest nutritional wake-up call for me.
Right on!
We need a “Like” button!
p.s. AAAH that was long! Sorry, Katie, for taking up all that space!
I’ve tried to recreate the biscuits at Red Lobster, Lara Bars and most recently – the coconut butter. (I was NOT successful on this last but did get it down to an interesting paste I can use)
I tried to recreate Starbucks frappuccinos. I was unable to create an exact replica. It tasted good, and I make them every now and then, but sadly for my wallet, it wasn’t good enough to replace my Starbucks addiction 🙁
I tried to recreate Nutella. It was an epic fail haha!
yes- i once tried to recreate a blueberry protein bar. it was vanilla flavored with whole blueberries in it. only now i know that if i made it again,i would use dried blueberries.
Panera had a salad the summer I was studying for the bar and it was delicious. They discontinued it, but I started making that at home. A salad isn’t too hard to recreate, although I didn’t quite get the dressing.
My grandmother found the biscuit recipes from Red Lobster *and* Bojangles somehow. Love them.
Wow that chocolate butter looks insanely good. Even if I won the artisana cacao I would be making that with the coconut butter to make it chocolatey after your own heart!
As for the question…I’ve tried to recreate a bunch of restaurant dishes, and recently I’be been making my own nut butters- maple cinnamon almond as we don’t get fancy flavours like you over here in England 🙁
I think I’ll have to get myself some coconut oil soon …
About re-creating restaurant dishes: My mum made up a recipe for a (vegan) bean & vegetable soup she ate at a café and it rocks!
I’d love to recreate more restaurant dishes but we’re not eating out often.
Oh, I also tweeted:
http://twitter.com/kleineKaiserin
I’ve tried to re-create honey almond butter, which is pretty easy to do and turns out great. I haven’t tried to re-create anything too tricky yet…. 🙂
Thanks for having such a cool contest/giveaway! 🙂
I havent tried to re create anything! Am I lame? Haha im just a really bad creative cook.
Thanks for the giveaway! Ive never tried what youre giving away, and im so excited to have a chance to!
I’ve definitely tried to recreate dishes/products- Silken Tofu, by adding Agar-agar to soy milk, and blondies from a local restaurant that I used to be OBSESSED with. My recipe didn’t come close 🙁
I tried to recreate an AMAZING lentil dip I had at a local cafe. I’m confident it will be delicious with some continued tweaking 🙂