Chocolate-y Pistachio Goodness

Okay, this is the LAST Christmas cookie post for a while...I promise!


I made these cookies last year in a non-raw version, and they were very rich but very delicious. Martha always knows how to come up with a good one! I loved them so much that I wanted to make a raw-version. For your viewing pleasure: my inspiration:

(Source)

Delicious, right?

So I tried my hand at it. They pretty much tasted the same, except for the chocolate part. I didn't have coconut butter or cacao butter to make smooth raw chocolate, so I just used cacao powder, dates, and a little water. As you can see, it didn't really spread that well. I wish I would have taken a picture of the inside of the cookie, but it looked just like the inspiration cookie.


Chocolate Pistachio Lemon Cookies


Makes: A LOT


Ingredients:


Cookie base:
0.75 cup shelled raw pistachios
4 Medjool dates
pinch Himalayan sea salt
juice of half a lemon


Filling:
1 medium avocado
1.5 TBL carob powder
pinch Himalayan sea salt
drizzle of agave


Chocolate Ganache:
Please use whatever works the best for you, as mine obviously didn't, haha...


1. Place all cookie ingredients together in the food processor and process until very smooth.


2. Scoop dough into a plastic bag with the tip cut off. Pipe into quarter-sized circles on a dehydrator sheet.


3. Dehydrate approximately 8 hours, or until the outside of the cookie is dry, but the inside is still moist.


4. Meanwhile, process all the filling ingredients together and place in a plastic bag with the tip cut off.


5. Pipe a small dot of the filling on one cookie half, then top with a plain cookie half. Place in freezer.


6. Make raw chocolate ganache. Carefully remove cookies from freezer and dip into ganache.


7. Garnish with pistachio halves. Freeze.


8. Enjoy! (Keep frozen or at least refrigerated until they're all eaten!)

They take some time to make, but they're amazingly delicious! And if you haven't already, Katie's VitaMix giveaway is ending very, very soon! Enter now!

G-g-g-g-ingerbread Men!

So, I had a hankering to make raw gingerbread men, since everyone else seemed to be doing it. I was looking for a cookie recipe with some substance, and ended up modifying this one. I didn't use any of the almonds, instead making pecan butter and adding in chia seeds (I first ground them to a powder in the spice grinder) for thickness. I played around with some spices and ended up with a somewhat oily, but thick, dough. So I put the dough in between some layers of paper towels, put a bowl over it, and then weighed it down to press some of the oil out. It worked like a charm!


Then I rolled the dough out between two sheets of plastic wrap, and attempted to cut them into baby gingerbread men. However, the dough was being stubborn, so I had to resort to making giant gingerbread men. I popped them in the dehydrator for probably 8 or so hours, and the cookies came out chewy and delicious, though a bit too chewy from the chia seeds. But they were a success! I loved to see how the dough turned out; it was almost like real, non-raw cookie dough! Beautiful.

The Three Musketeers

Uh-oh...this guy was a little angry.

Tonight I went out to dinner with my aunt to celebrate my birthday (which is really Tuesday). I had a beautiful poached pear salad with walnuts, mixed spring greens, and mandarin oranges. I skipped out on the bleu cheese and had the Thai vinaigrette on the side. Delicious! I would have taken a picture, but the lighting was horrible. Yum, yum, yum. I want to eat that salad again! I would have had some of the vegetable du jour, but it was green beans, and I get kind of picky about how they cook them. Most of the time they're either limp or too oily. So I took a pass. I'd much rather have broccoli instead, haha.

Have a good night and start to your week!

New Look

I finally decided to make the blog a little more colorful...do you like the new banner?

Continuing with the Christmas cookies theme, I had some leftover Samoraw filling, so I decided to concoct some sort of candy with it. Well, the only thing that came to mind was to make turtles, since technically, the Samoraw filling is supposed to caramel (with a hint of coconut!). So I took some raw walnuts that were chillin' in the freezer, plopped some filling on them, and squiggled some of the chocolate sauce on top. They actually weren't as tasty as I thought they'd be. I think it was the type of walnuts. The ones I get in bulk from Costco don't taste as good as the ones I order online, like from Nutsonline.com. But the best are the ones you crack open with a nutcracker...maybe they just taste so good because I had to work hard to get them, haha.

Raw Chocolate Turtles

Technically not a Christmas cookie, but I ate them like one...

New Year, New Post

Hi everyone! Sorry for the quite long delay in posts. Though it's a bit late for this, I want to post the Christmas cookies I made. I actually haven't been doing much dessert making at home because I'm trying to cut back on nuts. Without further ado, my first cookie:

The Samoraw

Delicious, isn't it? I used a modified recipe from this one, with more almond pulp and some walnuts instead of the cashews and oats, and I used half of the coconut shreds called for. After dehydrating the base, I wished I'd made the cookies a bit thicker, as they were very fragile! But I was in a hurry to get them done before Christmas Eve, when my family usually partakes of the cookies for dessert.


I put all the filling into a plastic bag and piped it onto the cookies, instead of spreading it, when probably would have been a nightmare with those fragile cookies! I ground up some cacao and added it to the VitaMix with some maple syrup (not raw), coconut oil, and a few dates to make the chocolate syrup. I put this into another plastic bag and piped on the stripes of frosting. Yum.


They were a little messy, but for my first try, I thought they were terrific!


Stay tuned for my other Christmas cookies and my failed attempts at making a non-nut based pudding... ;-)