Halva Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies

AMAZING!!!!!!!! Michael and I loved these!!! Growing up in a Jewish household halvah was always one of our go-to desserts and this is a fabulous raw substitute 🙂  I know when I make these for my family they are going to freak! These were (as in they are already gone haha) one of the best cookies ever! I used frozen raspberries and the raspberry sauce tasted sooo fresh and soo BRIGHT! YUMM!!! Plus how cute are they !?!??! Try these asap and let me know what you think.

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Halva Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies
These were thankfully inspired by Ani Phyo’s Halva Chia Thumbprint Cookies

Raspberry Sauce:
1/2 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
1/3 cup pitted semi-soft Medjool dates
1/8 cup agave syrup
1/4 cup water

Combine well in blender. Chill till ready for use.

Cookies:
3/4 cup flax seed powder
1/2 cup tahini
3/4 cup almond meal
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup pitted semi-soft Medjool dates
Recipe for Raspberry Sauce

Combine dry ingredients with tahini in a food processor and mix well. Add in dates and mix till combined. Roll dough into 10-15 balls. Place on sheet preferably lined with parchment paper. Use your thumb to make an indentation into the center of each cookie. Fill each with generous amount of sauce. Chill in the refrigerator for 20 min. or more to firm up. Will keep for several days or many weeks stored separately from jam if you can keep them that long haha 🙂 Enjoy!!!

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These are the cookies up close, so easy to make!

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a close-up of these little gems! mmmmmm

Chocolate-Covered Katie’s Banana Butter

Chocolate-Covered Katie came up with this great idea of mixing peanut butter and bananas to make a deelish Banana Butter! Adding the banana makes an amazingly spreadable and much lower calorie butter. You can make it thinner or thicker depending on the amount of nut butter you use. This recipe is so simple yet so super enjoyable!

I know this would be great with any nut butter but because I had just “made” my deelish Agave Pecan Butter I thought this was perfect time to use it. The butter was the perfect dip! We enjoyed this with apples and with pita chips as well. So creamy and sooo deelish!!

Katie, I totally want to be a member of your band 🙂 This is so fabulous!!!!

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Chocolate-Covered Katie’s Banana Butter
Makes about 1.5 cups

  • 2 bananas
  • 8 tablespoons of nut butter

Super simple…. just blend together and enjoy!

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Smaller journal: Raw Brownie Bites With Vanilla Icing

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So fabulous! I couldn’t be happier to share this article with all of you!

Marisa’s Healthy Kitchen and my Raw Brownie Bites With Vanilla Icing were featured in the Smaller journal, a journal of ideas and inspiration by the editors of Small Magazine. THANKS!!

Check it out here 🙂

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Agave Pecan Butter Surprise

Sometimes while making a recipe in your head it doesn’t always come out as planned. But sometimes you are left with a welcome surprise. That is how I came up with the Agave Pecan Butter. It is a great, super smooth spread and still raw! You don’t often see super smooth raw spreads and this one is a good one. I wish all mistakes were this successful haha! Of course if you want less butter half or quarter the ingredients. This is a great dip for apples or substiute for any nut butter.

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Agave Pecan Butter Surprise

3 cups Pecans
1/4 cups Agave
1/2 cups Water
dash of celtic sea salt

Blend the pecans till a fine flour and then until it forms a butter. Add the agave, water and salt and continue processing until smooth and deeelish!

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Chocolate Coconut Munchy Cereal

Another breakfast treat 🙂 I had to call this munchy cereal because if you are like me you will have a hard time leaving this one just for breakfast. It is so good!!! It is also deelish without the dehydrator as well. I am sure you good sprinkle this on top of yogurt for a great treat or eat it plain with almond milk or just munch on it on its own. This is such a great combo of sweet, salty, crunchy and chewy! mmmmm

Pre-Dehydrator Munchies

Pre-Dehydrator Munchies

After the dehyrator and ready to munch :)

After the dehyrator and ready to munch 🙂

Chocolate Coconut Munchy Cereal
4 cups of dried coconut
1/3 cup of cocao nibs
1 teaspoon of celtic sea salt
1/2 cup of honey or agave
1/4 cup of pitted dates

In a food processor combine the dried coconut, cocao nibs and sea salt. Process until fine. Add the honey and dates and process until well combined. Empty the processor onto a teflex dehydrator sheet and dry at 115 degrees for 12-15 hours.

Banana Date Chia Pudding

I had read Sarma’s post on banana milk and thought it was pure genius!! I figured I could sweeten my almond milk the same way. I normally use sweeteners like agave and honey, but I loved how simple it was to sweeten this pudding with just dates and bananas. So fabulous! I have to tell you this was one of my Favorite Chia Puddings ever! SOOO GOOD! Breakfast is such a good meal!! Now that I am fully hooked I wonder how I ever lived without it 🙂

Love this Breakfast!!

Love this Breakfast!!

Banana Date Chia Pudding
serves 3-4

1/2 cup chia seeds
2 cups almond milk
2 bananas
5 dates, pitted
a few dashes cinnamon
a pinch of salt

Place the chia seeds in a bowl.  In a Vita-mix blend together the almond milk, bananas, dates, cinnamon, and salt.  Pour this mixture over the chia seeds and whisk together with a fork.  Let it sit for 10 minutes in the fridge and then whisk again to get rid of any clumps. Cover and set in the fridge overnight. In the morning whisk one more time and then enjoy!! Yum Breakfast!!!!

I looked up the nutrition stats again 🙂 I hope this helps out!

279 Calories, 7g fat, No Saturated fat or Cholesterol, 122mg Sodium, 52g Carbs, 13g Fiber, 32g Sugar and 7g Protein

Raw & Vegan Double Cacao Pudding

I doubled this recipe and I am so glad I did 🙂 It was deeelish! Super chocolatey and smooth pudding. MMMM! 2 young thai coconuts gave me about 2 cups of coconut meat. This is one of those raw dishes that anyone would love (except if they did not like chocolate!). This also left me with delicious coconut water leftovers that we happily used in our smoothies. So refreshing and good!

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Raw & Vegan Double Cacao Pudding
Recipe by Matthew Kenny

  • 3/4 cup coconut meat
  • 4 tbsp raw cacao powder
  • 5 tbsp agave syrup
  • 1/3 to 1/2 cup coconut water
  • seeds scraped from 1/2 vanilla pod
  • 1/4 cup cacao nibs

Blend Coconut Meat, Cacao Powder, Agave, Coconut Water and Vanilla –
stir in half of the nibs and use the rest on top as a garnish

Young Thai Coconuts

Young Thai Coconuts

RAW Orange Goji Berry White Chocolate

I have been waiting to make this dessert for such a long time and I am soooo happy I finally did! This is going to be repeated (which I almost never do because there are so many other dishes I want to try!) It was super simple to make, froze quickly and eaten very happily afterwards 🙂 If you want this for dessert I would suggest setting it in the freezer just before preparing dinner and then dessert will be ready to serve immediately after. The chocolate becomes this gorgeous bright red-orange color that is sweet but chewy with crunchy bites. It is amazing!

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before freezing

frozen and ready to enjoy

frozen and ready to enjoy

RAW Orange Goji Berry White Chocolate
Posted by Sheryl Duruz on RFT

Grind up:
1/2 cup goji berries (usually sticky, not really a powder)

Blend until smooth:
1/2 cup melted cacao butter
1/2 cup raw cashews (grind these first, it will be easier that way)
1/2 cup agave nectar

Blend in Goji powder

Then by hand mix in whole:
1/2 cup cacao nibs (optional)
1/2 cup whole goji berries
The zest from 1 orange finely zested

Spread in a glass pie plate (think chocolate almond bark).

Chill in the freezer until firm.

Raw Strawberry Banana Crepes

It was our 1st anniversary this weekend (yeah!!!!) and I thought what better way to start it off then with some delicious and decadent crepes! mmmmm! These were amazing! They were also pretty light as we were not weighed down by sugar, flour, heavy cream etc. The crepes had the texture of banana fruit roll-ups and went so perfectly with the cream and the berries! There was only enough cream for 6 of the crepes, but 3 each was more than enough. They were so good! They were also quite simple. You have to plan ahead with the crepes and soaking the cashews but they are both so quick and easy it was no trouble at all 🙂 and soooo worth it!

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Raw Strawberry Banana Crepes
Recipe adapted from http://rawmazing.com/
Dehydration Time 6-8 hours Makes 8 crepes

Crepes:
3 Bananas
juice from 1 lemon

Place bananas in food processor. Add lemon juice and process until liquid. Pour into 5″ rounds. Dehydrate overnight at 110. Do not over dry these. You want them to be flexible.

Cashew Vanilla Cream
Pulp from one young coconut
1/2 C Cashews, soaked overnight
splash of madagascar vanilla
2 tablespoons agave

Place the cashews in Vitamix blender. Blend on high speed. Add the coconut meat, vanilla and agave. Process until well blended. You can refrigerate to thicken if needed.

1-2 cups of berries

Assembly
Spoon the Cashew Vanilla Cream into half the crepe. Top with berries and add more cream. Fold over and experience joy!

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Holiday Chia Pudding

I am always experimenting on myself by changing up my eating. Starting this week I have incorporated breakfast instead of just my juice. I am still drinking my juice, but having a solid breakfast first. I have already started to notice changes so I think this was a great decision for me. For this first week I decided to make Kristen’s Chia Pudding- I have wanted to make this for a while. As you know I love all things chia so I thought this would be the perfect go-to breakfast of choice. The best part is you can make a big bunch and it stays fresh in the fridge for 5 days or so. I doubled the recipe so that it would last me the whole week and it did 🙂 I over did it on the spices, so just have a lighter hand than me when you get to that part. Other than that this was deelish and a welcome change to my morning routine.

perfect little breakfast portions

perfect little breakfast portions

Holiday Chia Pudding
By Kristen Suzanne
Yield 1 1/4 cups

1/4 cup chia seeds
1/4 cup dried coconut, shredded & unsweetened
1 cup water
1/4 cup raw cashews (soaked 1 hour, drained and rinsed)
4 soft medjool dates, pitted
2 cloves
1 teaspoon lucuma powder
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

Place the chia seeds and coconut in a small bowl, briefly stir to mix, and set aside. Blend the remaining ingredients until smooth. Pour the blended cashew mixture into the bowl with the chia seeds and coconut and stir. Wait a few minutes and stir again. Wait a few minutes, again, and stir. Do the “wait and stir” once more, and then place the Holiday Chia Pudding in the refrigerator for about 15 – 20 minutes (or longer, if desired). I normally leave them in overnight. Then, enjoy.

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