Making Chocolate From Scratch!

This is incredibly simple and once you try this you will likely not want “regular” chocolate again. The recipe I used can be found here

Chocolate (Homemade)
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/4 cup virgin coconut oil
1 tablespoons sweetener of your choice (I used 3tsp Coconut Sugar)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
(I added cinnamon)

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I made one small change to the method – I added all the dry ingredients into a mug plus the vanilla extract and added hot water to dissolve them. This was mainly because of the coconut sugar which is quite granular when dry. On this plate the coconut sugar is directly next to the vanilla essence in the teaspoon measurer.

Then – Place all of your ingredients in a bowl with the coconut oil and whisk well until combined.

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It’ll look weird because the chocolate separates from the coconut oil until you whisk it enough.

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You’ll know it is ready when you can’t see any coconut oil and it is all amalgamated into an awesome liquid..

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It is magic whisk time, peoples!

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I ladled them into small plastic containers so I can have some chocolate snacks to take to work. Then put them in the fridge – or freezer if you want to eat it soonish. Once the coconut oil hardens, it is ready to eat.

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The levels of awesomeness cannot be described. :)

UPDATE –

I tried a new recipe for chocolate which I found here – Good Girl Gone Green – this recipe turned out great and will be the one I am using in the future.

Chocolate
1 cup of coconut oil, melted
1 cup of cacao powder
1/2 cup of maple syrup
1 Tbsp of vanilla flavor

It works out a lot more solid than the previous recipe.

Here is a link to some other chocolate recipes which might be worth trying. 8 Vegan Chocolate Recipes.

food, Paleo Recipes, recipes

Sweet Potato Fries

I cannot believe how easy this was to make, and how awesome it was to eat! Where have these sweet potato fries been all my life?

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Oh, I know where. The regular white potato has overshadowed all other forms of potato. Now, I know better..

All I did was cut up some sweet potato, coat them in extra virgin olive oil, then used the salt and pepper shaker on them. Baked for 20 mins, flipped over with the tongs, baked for another 15. Done!

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Update on all things Paleo – Saturday was my first day of eating paleo – or a slightly modified version of it. There has been some dairy in the form of yoghurt. I have a huge tub of it to finish off, and I have been eating it for breakfast with fruit.

The main thing I am worried about right now is cutting out added sugar. If there is sugar on the ingredients list, I’m not eating it. And there is sugar on a lot of ingredient lists, found in unexpected places. Like tinned beetroot, tinned tomatoes, vegetable chips – which would otherwise be a perfect thing for me as they have a sweet potato flavour. And stock! Chicken, beef, vege.

I have only found one brand which is sugar free in the health food section of Coles. Please carefully note, it is NOT with the other stocks, but with all the gluten free super healthy foods area. Why make things logical when you can make people wander the supermarket like ghosts unable to leave the planet earth until they find the one thing they are looking for in all these different sections?

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So anyone searching the internet as I did for “where can I find sugar free chicken stock in Australia” will hopefully find their way here and know which packet to look out for.

There is one teaspoon of coconut sugar in my daily coffee. That is all. I will eventually cut that out as well.

The second concern is avoiding grains. I have always been somewhat meh about bread – I can buy it and eat a shedload of it as a surprise, or I can buy it and forget to eat it. But I do love my Hot X Buns. I had a packet of them last week as a kind of goodbye to grains.

I am hesitant to say this now because who knows, there could be dark days ahead. I was concerned there would be side effects of cutting out the sugar. As it stands right now, I feel ok. Possibly better than ok. I’m not craving sugary foods nor am I craving foods in general. I’m less hungry than I have been for a long time. Partly that is thanks to the lite n easy teaching me to eat less more often, partly that would be because of all the proteins.

Basically the eating looks like this right now –

Breakfast – plain sugar free yoghurt with fruit

snack – almonds and cashews (bought loads of these from Costco in bulk)

lunch – chicken in coconut cream sauce (recipe to come as a surprise eventually, I made this one up myself and I made a lot of it yesterday)

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snack – olives stuffed with almonds or marinated olives

dinner – another chicken in coconut cream sauce

snack – an apple or an avocado

It seems boring but it turns out it is not. I can’t believe how much flavour everything seems to have now. I had an apple today and it was the sweetest thing I have eaten in centuries. It was like an appley can of coke. Is this what happens when you cut out the fake sugar sweetness?

food, paleo, Paleo Recipes, recipes

Coconut Mango Chicken

So easy, so awesome. Recipe here.

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I didn’t have any chipotle and I am not the greatest fan of hot chilli in any case, so put in some Paprika instead. It didn’t really need much in the way of spices – the mango reduced into this awesome almost buttery sauce. There were still chunks of mango which were so soft and incredible..

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More than likely I overcooked it. It will take some getting used to, these insane tiny cooking times with the pressure cooker. It was trying to tell me it needed to cook for 4 minutes or some such nonsense. I took the safer way out and cooked it for 30. I doubled the recipe as I had plenty of chicken however it made a lot of mango coconut juice left over. Probably should have used 1 can of coconut milk and one of coconut cream to thicken it.

food, paleo, Paleo Recipes, recipes