Squash season is here, and what better way to start off the day than zucchini pancakes? There’s plenty of savory versions a la potato cakes or mock crab cakes. Mine are traditional flapjacks that go with maple syrup. Vegetables actually make pretty good “dessert,” kind of like carrot cake. Try these sweet zucchini pancakes that can easily be veganized.
Photo: Robyn Lee/Serious Eats
As a dessert lover, I get hankerings for cookies a lot. The only thing is, I don’t want to bake a batch and finish them all by myself (which happened when I recently ate my friend’s homemade birthday present). The other option is going store bought. In New York, that means getting something affordable but disturbingly unnatural from Au Bon Pain, Pepperidge Farm and Entenmann’s. Or, spending $2 to $3 for a cupcake at Magnolia, Buttercup and all those other retro bakeries. But seriously, a cupcake for $3? They’re not that good…
Enter the Treats Truck, a bakery on wheels! They started dispensing fresh goodies from their environmentally friendly truck, Sugar, this June. A portion of their proceeds also goes to charity.
The early reviews on the Midtown Lunch blog sounded suspicious:
“It’s true, the peanut butter cookie is not very good. Sure, it looks tasty and delicious but it’s actually POISON! So, um, don’t buy any ok? Thanks.”
“I can confirm that the PB sandwich cookie is just awful. And the standard chocolate chip cookie and the sugar dots were also quite heinous. I hated every luscious, highly caloric bite.”
Hmm, it was worth an investigation. An undercover reporter at Court TV brought back the bounty to our office. Read the blog for the verdict and a blurb about yours truly. (Full disclosure: one of the bakers is a fan of Court TV, but I’ve never met her.)
Photo: Susie Felber/Court TV
If you’re too lazy to click there, here’s my thoughts. What I like about the Treats Truck is they don’t pretend to be something they’re not. If I were to describe them in one word, it would be honest. “Not too fancy, always delicious!” proclaims their slogan. Their $1 cookies aren’t gourmet, but they’re satisfying. There’s none of that $3 “Oreo” madness (for one cookie!), like at Bouchon Bakery. Their peanut butter cookies actually taste like peanut butter, and their other goods are buttery and tender. I don’t know how their “competitors” manage to make cakey, shockingly sweet or biscuit-like cookies.
It’s worth a stroll to make a purchase or try one of their many free samples. Their staff is super nice. Check their web site or call for their locations. Since there’s only one truck, it can be difficult to pin them down. Twice, their site said they’d be near my work, but they weren’t. 🙁 Now I programmed their number into my cell phone for the latest updates. Hopefully they’ll develop a regular schedule.
Treats Truck
212-691-5226
It’s that time of year again: the Fancy Food Show! From July 8-10, more than 5,700 booths from 73 countries and regions populated New York. Established and fledgling companies hobnobbed with food service professionals and the media, hoping that their product would be distributed to the masses. It’s a preview of what’s to come to the supermarket shelves.
The natural food products were greatly improved. Last year, there were pseudo whole-grain products and stuff that tasted like medicine. This time around, there was lots of flax, peanuts in all forms (salt-blistered cocktail nuts and natural peanut butters), whole-grain crisps, creative oils, fruit-sweetened sodas and even gluten-free experimentation.
As for non-healthy foods, there were gourmet potato chips and sweet/salty/savory confections. I had some good peanut brittle with seafood seasoning. Long a practice in France, there were also several salted caramels. I think U.S. candy is actually pretty salty to hide the flaws. These candies, however, used salt deliberately and carefully.
On the chocolate front, there was a continuation of single-origin chocolates and cacao nibs. Nothing ground breaking, but there was fine tuning. I felt bad for chocolate giant Ghirardelli, who was proudly handing out 73% chocolate. Cacao percentage is so 2005; artisan makers are focusing on cacao quality rather than quantity.
I enjoyed going a second year in a row, because I developed a better strategy: eat a light meal beforehand (there’s enough food in the Javits Center to feed a village, but all that random stuff churning around in your stomach doesn’t feel good) and go to the Focused Exhibits first. Otherwise, you’ll get lost in the random food booths. Also, it was nice seeing the fruits of last year’s show. Whole Foods now carries Skotidakis Greek yogurt and 34 Degrees fruit pastes, two of my favorites from last year.
Let’s get on to my personal Best in Show, shall we? I had a hard time paring down my favorites, hence the super-specific categories. First, the chocolate.
Best Chocolate Bar – two-way tie
Amano – At 4,441 feet above sea level in Orem, Utah, Art Pollard is one of the few remaining independent American chocolate makers (Hershey’s bought out Scharffen Berger and Dagoba a couple years ago). He doesn’t use emulsifiers like soy lecithin, which create smoothness but can interfere with flavor. He also swears by the mountaintop setting, saying it allows him to process the chocolate at a lower temperature and preserve more flavors. He only makes 70% chocolate, but they taste radically different because of the origin. The Ocumare from Venezuela tastes like berries, apricots and plums, while the Madagascar tastes like oranges. He also has a limited edition Cuyagua.
Domori from Italy also doesn’t use emulsifiers, and it’s a wonder how they get their chocolate so smooth and thick. Two of their 70% Venezuelan chocolates are also very different. (Which is why the percentage gives you limited information. Purists swear by the country of origin, and super-purists insist of single plantations.) The Rio Caribe Superior has notes of plum, apricot, peppercorns, coffee, milk, and sugar. If you think that’s a mouthful to say, wait till you taste it! The Caranero Superior, also from Venezuela, tastes like mocha, nut, raisins and dirt.
Best Fair Trade and Organic Chocolate
Theo – Okay, so they don’t have competition because they’re the first roaster of Fair Trade Certifiedâ„¢ cocoa beans and the only roaster of organic cocoa beans in the U.S., but they’re darn good. My favorite is the nib brittle, which has nuanced chocolate bits encased in hard candy. Going along the salty-sweet trend, their Bread & Chocolate bar has toasted bread crumbs (it’s not so weird; they’re crunchy like nuts) and salt. I wanted to like this bar, but I found it too salty. They also have several single-origin chocolate bars and tasty truffles. The bars are a bit hard though.
Best Truffles
Garrison Confections – Chocolatier Andrew Shotts was the executive pastry chef at the Russian Tea Room and helped formulated Guittard’s high-end couverture, E. Guittard. In 2001, he started his own chocolate company with seasonal truffles. His coffee truffle sang in my mouth.
Best Healthy Chocolate
Vere – This New York company only uses Ecuadorian cacao, which is naturally sweet. As such, Vere adds just a little sugar and some fiber to their chocolate. My favorite is the chocolate coconut cluster, and I don’t even like coconut that much. It’s wonderfully crunchy and paper thin. Although their chocolate is delicious, I wouldn’t shell out $2.50 for a truffle. No worries though, you can get generous free samples every Friday from 12:00-6:00 at their factory (12 W 27 St. between 6 Ave. and Broadway).
Most Creative Use of Chocolate
Rabitos Fig Bon Bon – Imagine a truffle encased in a bulging dried fig and then covered in chocolate. Genius! These figs are Pajaritos, which only grow in the southern Spanish region of Extremadura.
Pralus claims to be one of only three chocolate makers in France. I’m not sure what criteria he’s using, since Valrhona, Bernachon, Weiss and Michel Cluizel also make chocolate. No matter, each of his single-origin chocolates taste like a different color of the rainbow. They take a little getting used to, since they have sharp white cheddar and mushroom notes. The Madagascar chocolate-covered cocoa beans have that signature Pralus taste. His chocolate is hard to get in the U.S., so treat yourself if you can find it.
Best Snacking Chocolate
Charles Chocolates from San Francisco makes fun things, like triple-coated chocolate nuts, tea truffles and peanut butter butterflies. They use a combination of Guittard and Cacao Barry chocolate, which are pretty neutral (no high notes of fruit or soil). I like my chocolate stronger, but this chocolate is nice if you don’t want to think too hard.
Coming up in part two: everything else.
Related posts:
Fancy Food Show 2006 Favorites, part 1
Fancy Food Show 2006 Favorites, part 2
Chocolate is my undoing year round, but ice cream is my undoing during the summer. I love nudging it with my tongue and letting it gracefully melt away. But every so often, a little voice nags me: “You shouldn’t eat so much ice cream because it’s bad…
…for the environment.” I bet you thought I was going to say it was bad for you. True, but did you know that one cup of milk yields 116 pounds of cow manure? Not only is manure trash, but its stinky gases contribute to global warming. It also takes 14 trillion gallons of irrigation water and 22 billion pounds of fertilizer to produce feed for U.S. livestock each year. The amount of energy it takes to produce that fertilizer could provide power to 1 million Americans a year.
Most people realize the tenets of eating humanely raised animals or cutting back on meat. However, the amount of food and water it takes to keep those animals alive could feed thousands, if not millions, of starving people. That’s why I limit dairy and eggs in my diet too.
I like the idea of dairy-free ice cream, but brands like So Delicious, Double Rainbow and Temptation are chalky and hard. You have to eat a lot to feel satisfied, giving you the Snackwell’s effect (remember when people thought it was okay to eat 10 cookies at a time because they were low-fat?). Homemade soy ice cream doesn’t fare much better.
I just about gave up on vegan ice cream, until I picked up Raw
It sounds great in theory, but evidently they never heard of lycopene, an antioxidant that tomatoes release only when cooked. Also, shipping coconuts from Thailand year round negates eating locally and in season. Hmm, what polutes the air more: jet fuel for coconuts or fertilizer for cows?
Raw “cooking” is also labor intensive. Sure, you could spend several days sprouting grains and dehydrating “bread,” if that was your only job. Before Roxanne’s restaurant closed in 2004 (they couldn’t keep up with the $10 million in costs), they had one guy devoted to cracking coconuts for the pad thai noodles and ice cream.
Luckily, Raw’s recipe for maple-pecan ice cream is doable. There’s only two ingredients. Hint: I just told you what they were. In typical raw fashion, you soak nuts overnight and combine them with maple syrup. Nuts normally have 75% fat and 25% protein, but once they’re soaked and sprouted, the ratio reverses, according to Klein. In raw food theory, nuts and seeds don’t grow into trees because the enzymes are dormant. You have to soak them for optimal nutrition. That sounds nice, but with that analogy, soaked nuts and seeds should grow into trees inside you.
I have a habit of toasting nuts to bring out their flavors, so I couldn’t resist here. The roasted pecan ice cream had a slightly richer flavor, but it was also a little greasier. Raw nuts work fine here, because the soaking enhances their flavor.
It’s creamy, relatively good for you (with minerals and heart-healthy fats), and you won’t care that it’s vegan! Like the plain frozen yogurt, this ice cream is best eaten the same day it’s made. Even with the addition of vodka (to lower the freezing point), it gets hard the next day, and the nutty bits become more pronounced.
Maple-Pecan Ice Cream
from Raw
2 cups raw or toasted pecans, soaked for eight to 10 hours in filtered water
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 1/2 tablespoons vodka (optional)
Drain the pecans, reserving 1 cup of the water. In a high-speed blender, combine the pecans, the 1 cup of water, maple syrup and vodka (if using), and process until smooth. Pass the purée through a fine-mesh sieve, and freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.
One year ago, New York frozen yogurt was in a state of emergency. Fake Tasti D-Lite and its clones were in every 10-block radius. The “frozen dessert” chain boasts 100 flavors, but they all taste like soapy whipped air. There’s no excuse, since each serving has as much as 224 calories, instead of the advertised 40. Dude, why don’t you add some cocoa powder (which is virtually fat-free anyway) instead of lactase?
Tasti even replaced the excellent soft-serve at Ben & Jerry’s in Grand Central station. To satisfy my craving, I scoped out at least five delis, which advertised in big letters: “Frozen yogurt.” I always came out disappointed, since their machines were never running.
“Does anyone remember real frozen yogurt?” a Chowhounder lamented on an online message board. I felt the same way. Where was that stuff I ate to celebrate my brother’s birthday and me passing my driver’s license exam?
Early this year an L.A. transplant, Pinkberry, revived real frozen yogurt. It’s so popular out west that people don’t mind paying $68 for a large: $7.50 for the yogurt and the rest in parking tickets (because it’s so crowded). While I’m thankful that Pinkberry changed the culinary landscape, I’m not sure why they got all the credit.
Since the ’70s, Bloomingdale’s Forty Carrots cafe has made much better plain frozen yogurt. Not to be confused with vanilla, it’s refreshingly tart and creamy. “Crapberry” resembles sour ice milk. There’s a difference between tart and sour. Sour is what spoiled food tastes like.
Several bloggers, including 101 Cookbooks, re-created the treat at home with nothing more than plain yogurt and sugar. I used Fage’s 2% Greek yogurt, which is incredibly rich, since the water’s strained out. A 32-ounce tub costs about $4 at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, but it’s not so expensive, considering that you’d need to buy twice as much mediocre yogurt and let it drain for 24 hours to get the same result.
Paired with strawberries, it makes a great berries and cream-type dessert. Add some blueberries too, to get a red, white and blue theme going. Happy fourth!
101 Cookbooks posted the recipe from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop. The yogurt gets hard after more than two hours in the freezer, but you can try adding 1 1/2 tablespoons of vodka to the mix.
It’s ironic that two ways of preserving food are also synonymous with “difficult.” If you’re in trouble, you’ll say you’re in a pickle or in a jam. Making pickles, however, is easy. My dad can’t boil pasta, but he can make pickled cucumbers and radishes with soy sauce and cilantro. Let vegetables sit in vinegar, salt and/or sugar, and you’ll have a snack to fall back on whenever you’re, er, in a pickle.
Since the summer brings a surplus of watermelon, I used leftover rind that would have gone to the trash. The rind is edible, as long as you peel off the tough skin. By itself, it’s akin to cucumber.
There’s several methods for pickling watermelon rind, some which call for buckets of salt. I chose a vintage Joy of Cooking recipe, because it has sugar instead. The finished product resembles extra crisp, tart apple pie filling. It’s great by itself, but it can also accompany yogurt, ice cream, pancakes, pork chops and hot dogs (finely mince the pickles to make a sweet relish). It’s so good that you might want to buy watermelon just to use up the rind.
Canning and preserving gets a difficult rap because most recipes call for sterilizing the jars and creating a vacuum seal. I use ordinary glass jars and don’t worry about removing the air. The acid, sugar and salt act as natural preservatives, as long as the pickles are left in the refrigerator.
This recipe may be my cheapest one yet. The watermelon rind is essentially free and so is the recipe (I found the book on a giveaway shelf).
Sweet Pickled Watermelon Rind
Adapted from The Joy of Cooking Standard Edition (1973)
Makes about 5 quarts
Rind of 1 large watermelon, about 5 quarts
7 cups sugar
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
Thanks to those of you who discovered this blog through through Chow, Serious Eats and Blogging New Orleans. After detailing the perils of my CulinaryCorps/Katrina service trip, I’m ready to move on to the highlights of New Orleans cuisine. When you think of New Orleans food, you probably gravitate towards gumbo, neon-colored king cake or funny French things like etouffee. Not coffee, right?
Among New Orleans’ many food secrets is cold-brew coffee. It’s as low-tech as you can get: no coffee maker, French press or special equipment is needed. Heck, you don’t even need electricity. Just combine coffee grounds and cool water in a bowl. After 12 hours, strain the solids out, and iced coffee is at your call — no extra chilling required. Yes, you need the long soak, but prep it before you go to bed, and coffee will be waiting for you in the morning. Once you try it, you’ll see how backwards it is to brew coffee with hot water and then wait for it to cool down.
“Heat brewing releases acids and oils, and as the coffee sits in the refrigerator, the bitterness intensifies,” according to a NY Times Magazine article. Cold-brew coffee is 67% less acidic, making it smooth, rich and naturally “sweeter.”
Cold-brew is so common in New Orleans that you can buy syrupy coffee concentrate at neighborhood supermarkets, as well as Whole Foods.
For better or worse, I can now enjoy coffee! For the longest time, regular cups would dehydrate me like crazy. I switched to decaf, and still no dice. The culprit, as I found out, wasn’t caffeine. It was the acid. I also would take my coffee unsweetened, since sugar somehow made it sour (the exception: coffee from Dunkin Donuts and Oaxaca, Mexico). Again, the culprit was the acid.
For an authentic experience, try a coffee-chicory blend from Cafe du Monde, French Market or Blue Bottle Coffee company. During their civil war, the French ran short on coffee, so they used chicory as an extender. Chicory is the root of the endive plant. It tastes chocolatey, is caffeine free, cleanses the blood and improves your liver’s health.
Note: today’s Times article on cold-brewed coffee is purely a coincidence. The NY Times Magazine ran a similar (but better) article way back in May.
Scaled down from a Blue Bottle Coffee Company recipe, as appeared in the New York Times Magazine Ingredients Instructions
Cold-Brew Iced Coffee Recipe
1/5 pound dark roast coffee and chicory, medium ground (about 1 cup)2 cups cold waterIceMilk
http://www.sugoodsweets.com/blog/2007/06/iced-coffee/
After meeting Shuna from Eggbeater yesterday, I decided to add a long overdue recipe index to this site. Over a dinner of pierogies and latkes at Veselka, we talked about how to increase traffic to our blogs. As a pastry chef, she’s meticulous. As a blogger, she’s no different!
Obviously, everyone comes here for the food. Most come for the chocolate-hazelnut butter recipe (very similar to Nutella). One person even came after searching, “is Nutella good for you.” Another stumbled here after searching, “why does my steamed bun dimpled when i remove the cover of the steamer?” (sic) Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Dimpled Bun. I don’t have an exact answer, but I’d guess the buns collapse after they lose heat. It’s the same reason why souffles fall and get wrinkly when you remove them from the oven.
To optimize my site for search engines and to help people find what they need, I’ve listed all my recipes on one page. Soon, Now you’ll be able to sort them by category.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been processing some heavy stuff from my food-oriented trip to New Orleans. First, I need to get the loom and gloom out of my system, and then I’ll move on to brighter subjects. I promise!
It was supposed to be a primer on jambalaya and king cake. Instead, a writing assignment led me to one of the hardest yet most rewarding experiences of my life.
In January, a food editor asked me to write an article on Hurricane Katrina victims who were celebrating Mardi Gras out of state. As I interviewed my subjects, I found that they couldn’t talk about their biggest joy of the year without mentioning the biggest tragedy of their lives. There was Kevin Goodman, a Mardi Gras Indian who survived at the Morial Convention Center with hardly any food or water. He saw diabetics and wheelchair-bound people die prematurely. He saw others kill each other. Now settled in Austin, Texas, he doesn’t plan on returning to the place he once called home.
And no matter how hard Mary Prater, a student-teacher who relocated to Indianapolis, explained the importance of the Mardi Gras Zulu coconut, I remained clueless.
When Fred Sullivan told me about his plan to celebrate with a crawfish boil in his new home in Florida, I was intrigued. But I didn’t see how eating with your hands over soggy newspaper was a fine dining experience.
The article sparked an interest in New Orleans. So when fellow food blogger Gerald San Jose told me about a New Orleans CulinaryCorps (like Peace Corps for cooks) trip, I immediately signed up. When I volunteered from June 1 to 8, I finally saw the sparkling, beaded Mardi Gras costumes and experienced not one, but two crawfish boils in all their glorious mess.
I also saw heartbreaking living conditions. I had been warned: It will be hot. It will be dirty. You will work 16-hour days. You will tour mold-infested houses. However, nothing could prepare me for the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest hit areas of the storm.
Walking through the French Quarter in New Orleans, you’d never know that a disaster struck. It’s business as usual, if not a little subdued. The Ninth Ward, however, has been neglected because it’s one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
The news describes Extreme Home Makeover-type rebuilding in New Orleans. In reality, it’s the exception to the rule in the Ninth Ward. An area that looked like the size of Manhattan was washed away. Except if such a thing happened in Manhattan, there’s no way it would remain in shambles after almost two years. In some areas, a couple concrete steps were the only clue that houses used to stand. People were still living in shoebox-sized FEMA trailers. Some streets were deserted except for one occupied house. Residents stubbornly stayed because they inherited the land from their family, and they had no where else to go.
During the week, my CulinaryCorps teammates and I cooked in several needy areas, including Emergency Communities, a recreation center offering free meals, laundry and Internet access. When we pulled up to the site in the Lower Ninth Ward, we were greeted by an overflowing dumpster and several trash bags on nearly toxic ground. Forget recycling; they didn’t even have regular trash pick up. Within the first 10 minutes of arriving, I wanted to faint. I couldn’t tell whether it was the scorching heat, rotten food or heavy lifting.
The walk-in refrigerator had cooked meals dating back to April and cases of yellowing “green” onions. The freezer was an even bigger nightmare, with chicken that expired in February 2005. Emergency Communities just served it three days earlier because they had nothing better for the residents. The refrigerator and freezer were actually broken trucks that leaked an oil-coolant cocktail into the street.
For hours, I disposed of the green onions and other unmentionables. It didn’t matter how many times I wiped my sweat with hard-to-find paper towels; I was dripping from head to toe.
After restoring the fridge and freezer to a workable condition, I returned the next day and found fresh empty beer cans inside. Our leader Christine Carroll said that the first CulinaryCorps team in March cleaned up Emergency Communities, exactly like we did. Then it got dirtier than ever.
The conditions at Emergency Communities were worse than my experiences in rural Mexico, where a pack of soda was a week’s salary. In Mexico, people at least had access to clean food and water. My teammate Kim O’Donnel, who did relief work in AIDS-ravaged Zambia, said that even Africa was better.
Everything at Emergency Communities seemed hopeless, from the kitchen to the glassy-eyed residents who hobbled in for the meals. CulinaryCorps put in two days of hard work, but on-site volunteers are still working there for free. Twenty of them slept in a trailer a little larger than my one-bedroom apartment. They shared one outdoor shower converted from a Port-a-Potty. Two volunteers were “upgraded” to an abandoned house across the street. As the sun set, they sat on a dirty mattress, thankful for an extension cord that powered dim Christmas lights inside (their only source of electricity). No one should live like this, especially in America.
On our last day, we worked at Café Reconcile, which was supposed to be a beacon of hope. The full-fledged restaurant was run by at-risk teens who had no positive role models or were abandoned after Katrina (some schools still remain closed). A lot of the teens did marijuana since they were 10 or 12, but the vocational program instills confidence and gives them job skills. Customers crowded in during lunch to support the cause and sample their award-winning bread pudding.
Behind the public front, some of my colleagues were even more discouraged by Café Reconcile than Emergency Communities. Of the fifteen or so teens that enrolled, only four remained last week. Roger, the young man that I worked with, had exceptional knife skills, but he kept walking out every 10 minutes. During lunch service, he put his head down on the table in defeat as I fulfilled orders. In the meantime, teammate Courtney Knapp said she spent three hours scrubbing pre-Katrina dirt off the kitchen prep table.
It’s a miracle that anything got done in that chaotic kitchen. One of the directors quit after he was mugged at gunpoint, twice.
I want to believe that relief is in sight. Café Reconcile’s biggest success story is Oscar, a 17-year-old alum who now works at Emeril’s restaurant. The first lady was so impressed with him that he’s due to tour the White House.
After our intervention, Mark Weiner, the founder and executive director of Emergency Communities, promised to hire a kitchen enforcer. I can only hope that it’ll come to fruition and that our leftover meals aren’t still sitting in the refrigerator.
There’s also a new farmers market in the Ninth Ward, the only source of fresh produce for miles. The Holy Angels Farmers Market reported the best business ever after we held a brunch fundraiser. Granted, they were only four vendors in a church parking lot, but I want to believe… I need to believe.
If you are in any way moved, know that you can help.
For more info, check out these links:
When it comes to sugar, I let nature be the guide. Instead of eating flavored yogurt with one tablespoon of added sugar, I’d rather eat plain yogurt with real fruit. For breakfast, I sweeten my oatmeal with raisins rather than maple syrup (maple syrup may have trace minerals, but you have to eat a lot to get the benefits).
Although I love sweets, most packaged stuff is overkill. Case in point: Quaker chewy granola bars are 1/3 sugar by weight. There’s more sugar than fiber and protein combined. Their 25% Less Sugar line sounds like a great idea in theory, but it has calorie-free sweeteners. The solution is dialing down the sweetness, not replacing it with lab-made “food!”
Larabar, on the other hand, makes excellent no-added-sugar snacks. They use the natural sugar of dates, nature’s sweetest fruit. White sugar isn’t evil per se, but it lacks the fiber, vitamins, and minerals of fruits.
Larabar used to make Mayabars (which I dubbed the best chocolate energy bar from the 2006 Fancy Food Show). They were fruit-sweetened chocolate bars with crunchy cacao nibs. Unfortunately, they revamped the line (now called Jocolat) and removed the nibs for a “smoother texture.” Bah, I want my essence of chocolate. The other problem is they’re expensive at $2 each. Since their bars are essentially dried fruit and nuts, it’s not that hard to figure out the recipe.
Anna at Cookie Madness developed a formula: 1 part of dried fruit to 1/2 part of crunchies (nuts, oatmeal, puffed rice, cacao nibs, etc.) by weight. I added a little more cocoa for extra chocolatiness. It’s not an exact recipe; you can adjust the ingredients by taste.
These are delicious chocolate bars that are actually good for you! You get a one serving of fruit with plenty of omega-3 fatty acids.
Naturally Sugar-Free Chocolate Bars
Adapted from Cookie Madness
Makes 6 bars or 24 “truffles”
2/3 cup walnuts
1 cup packed, pitted dates (about 24)
2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-processed
2 Tbsp cacao nibs or finely chopped dark chocolate
Toast the walnuts in a preheated 325F oven for 15 min., or until browned and fragrant. Stir the nuts half way through baking.
In a food processor, pulse the walnuts until they are pebble sized pieces. Set aside in a medium bowl.
Place the dates in the processor and pulse until coarsely chopped. Process until they’re smooth and form a ball around the blade. (At first, you will get lots of sticky pieces.) Add the cocoa and process until smooth.
In a bowl, knead the date mixture with the walnuts and cacao nibs until they stick together. If the mixture is too sticky, add more nuts or cacao nibs. If too dry, add a couple teaspoons of water.
On a cutting board lined with plastic wrap, shape the mixture into a long 1″-wide rectangle. Slice pieces with a sharp knife. Or, roll into 1″ balls. Store leftovers in the fridge.
Note: You can use natural or Dutch-processed cocoa, depending on your tastes. Natural cocoa has more complex flavors, but it is more acidic. I like to use it in cooked recipes. Dutch-processed cocoa has some the edge taken out, but you also loose other flavor elements. I like it for frostings and other raw uses. Generally, don’t swap one cocoa for another in baking recipes, since it can throw off the pH and affect the way cakes rise.
