Carrot Juice with Chocolate

I could say I went slightly carrot-mad last week, but I felt like my body was craving the orange beauties so I kinda went along with it. I was having between 500ml and 1L of fresh carrot juice everyday as an experiement to see how my skin conditions would fare having read so much on carrot juice recently (check out a blog post I did for the Raw Divas here). My skin didn't turn orange but my acne looks better :)

And with left over pulp from juicing so much I also made a big batch my my favourite carrot soup, and my favourite carrot falafels of Gena's you can find here, but never got 'round to making these delicious individual carrot cakes here. Another week perhaps coz you can freeze vegie pulp until you've got enough for what you want - or until you've got time to get in the kitch again!

If I can tune in and listen to what my body wants I'll run with it - so when it was screaming CARROT JUICE, that's what I did. And I feel amazing from drinking it! The only problem I have is when my body feels like chocolate - alot of chocolate - then I'm not so sure if my body is telling me the truth or playing little white lies :)

So with Easter just around the corner I've spent the last 2 days mucking around in the kitchen trying to make some choccies. I had a couple of recipes to try and a whole load of different ingredients to experiment with I was like a little kid in a lolly shop full of exciement!

So what was the outcome? Well let's start with the question "What did I learn?"
To trust in my own abilities more that's what. To not put all your eggs in one basket (no pun intended), and to make sure whatever happens when you're in the kitchen, remember to LAUGH!

Why? Because even when I followed each recipe they both turned out horrible! One tasted disgusting. One wouldn't mix properly...

Then I had problems where my chocolate wouldn't come out of the moulds (more than once which really did my head in). I mixed the ingredients too much in the second lot which made my once glossy silky mixture turn kinda chewy and thick ...

and ontop of that going wrong I was thinking about the deadlines I had for other things going on in my life, college work, packing that I still had to do to go away, and the house was a mess... ARGH! I felt like I was wasting time TRYING to be the Easter Bunny and make yummy choccies but it wasn't working!

It's been a stressful last couple of days (with a head cold trying to rear its ugly head at the same time but I'm not letting it) but I have now made my choccies!

And you know what? It was the laughter that made the biggest difference! That and deciding to poo-poo the recipes I had and come up with my own. TRUSTING in my own abilities and you know what? The best tasting ones are the ones I came up with myself! They were the smoothest, silkiest, easiest to work with look amazing!

Easiest Tastiest Choccie Recipe Ever!

1/2 cup coconut oil
1 cup cacao powder
25ml maple syrup
1/8 cup cacao butter, melted (you can omit this)


Melt the coconut oil and cacao butter down then slowly whisk in the cacao powder and maple syrup (or any other sweetener you like - by the time I got to this recipe after mucking up so many others, maple syrup was pretty much all I had left but it does give a beauiful depth to the flavour).


Pour your choccie into moulds or into a container to cut up into pieces or squares later on.

You can add anything you like to these too. Be creative! Nuts, seeds, goji berries, bee pollen, buckwheat crunchies... I also made a bunch with a few drops of peppermint oil for a minty surprise!
The hardest part of waiting for them to set!

(Another super easy recipe that also worked amazingly well and tasted sensational - if you can get your hands on CACAO LIQUER, melt that down and add sweetener to taste. That's it. And it sets at room temperature. The taste is incredible! I ran outta that stuff real quick!)

This recipe is so damn easy coz alot of people would have coconut oil in the panrty, but not alot of people have cacao butter lying around. And to be honest with you - as I am yet to perfect a chocolate recipe using predominantly cacao butter, coz I just don't like the taste of it! At all. So I need to find a ratio where I do. Where as coconut oil - now you're talking! The only down side is that they can't be kept at room temperature or they'll likely melt. Cacao butter wouldn't. But the health benefits of coconut oil versus those of cacao butter - ENDLESS (and you can read a little here) !!

So when my body craves choccies that I have made from my own recipes with lots of coconut oil, there's good reason and I will listen intently :)

But from tomorrow I'll be goingn away on retreat for 6 days and consuming nothing but GREEN SMOOTHIES which I am SO EXCITED about!! So I wont be doing any blogs for at least a week if not a few days more, but will be sure to SPILL ALL when I get back! Have an awesome long weekend!

And a Happy Happy Easter :)