Since the name of this blog does contain the word “Candy”, I figure it’s appropriate to write my first real post on a dessert-type meal. Or two dessert-type meals, actually.
I was craving raw ice cream after dinner on Saturday, so I thumbed through the dessert sections of a few of my favourite raw cookbooks. (As an aside, I’ve never felt completely comfortable calling them “cookbooks”. Is “recipe books” more accurate? Or some other term?) Using some tasty-looking ice cream recipes for inspiration, I came up with banana vanilla ice cream with cacao nibs, and chocolate almond butter cup candy.
Banana vanilla ice cream with chocolate almond butter cup candy
Banana Vanilla Ice Cream
1 1/2 cups raw cashews, soaked 2 hours
1 large banana
2 cups water
1/4 cup agave syrup
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Combine all ingredients in a high-speed blender until smooth. Let the mixture chill in the fridge or freezer for a couple of hours, then pour into an ice cream maker and follow manufacturer’s instructions.
I topped the finished ice cream with a handful of raw cacao nibs, and lots of chocolate almond butter cup pieces. This recipe can be found in Matthew Kenney’s Everyday Raw, and it involves a layer of almond butter mixture sandwiched between layers of chocolate, chopped into little pieces. The photos below documents the process.
Spreading the top chocolate layer
Chopping up the chocolate almond butter cup candy
Last night, I felt like something decadent after a long day at the library where I didn’t make much of a dent in my to do list. I had lots of almond butter cup left, but no more ice cream, so I decided to whip up some easy banana soft serve, first made famous on the awesome blog Choosing Raw. It couldn’t be simpler — frozen bananas thrown in the food processor for a few minutes — and I think I actually prefer the banana ice cream to the more decadent cashew-based one. Straight-up frozen bananas are closer to nature, and healthier for you, too. Both versions were incredible, and left my sweet tooth satiated.
Raw Candy 