Raw Chocolate Coconut Cup Recipe & Giveaway Result!

Hi everyone! I hope you had a great weekend! 🙂

As promised, today I’m going to share my recipe for raw chocolate coconut cups.  I’m not sure if the name is an accurate description of what these chocolates are, so if anyone can think of a better name, please let me know!

Raw Chocolate Coconut Cups

They are so simple and quick to make.  If you guys do make them I would LOVE to see the pics! You could post them on my FB page or send them to me on Twitter (@GoodStuffSharon).  I’m sure your pics will be amazing! 🙂

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • raw cacao (cocoa) powder & raw cacao (cocoa) butter
    These can be bought from health food stores (such as Harvest in Bath) or online
  • creamed coconut
    I use Patak’s creamed coconut sachets, which are available from major supermarkets here in the UK.  Creamed coconut is pure coconut flesh, which is pulverised and formed into a solid block.  It’s a common ingredient in Indian cooking, hence why Patak’s sell it.

I’m sure that coconut butter will be a fine replacement if you can’t get hold of creamed coconut.

  • Goji berries, almonds & brazil nuts, finely chopped (I whizz them in my mini chopper).  As you probably know by now, I’m a huge fan of goji berries.  They not only taste wonderful, but they’re packed with goodness too 🙂  These can be bought from health food stores, some major supermarkets (Asda are currently selling them for £1.47/100g compared to £2/100g at Waitrose) and online.

[Source]

  • Petit Four cup cases.  I double these up and use 2 cases per chocolate, to help them keep a nice round shape.

Apologies in advance to my US friends for not giving you quantities in cups. I wasn’t convinced by the online converter I found, so if anyone can recommend a decent one then please do let me know.

[print_this]

Ingredient quantities
60g raw cacao butter, grated or finely chopped & divided in half
50g raw cacao powder, divided in half
3 tbsp Sweet Freedom fruit sweetener (or agave syrup)
50g creamed coconut (or coconut butter)
2 tbsp finely chopped goji berries, almonds, brazils (optional topping)
12-14 petit four cup cases (or 24-28 if using 2 cases per chocolate)

Method

  1. Arrange the petit four cup cases on a tray or in a freezable container (I use a plastic container)
  2. Prepare a bain marie (double broiler) and place 30g cacao butter in the bain marie bowl. When it has melted, mix in 25g cacao powder and sweetener to taste (I use 1.5 T Sweet Freedom or 1T agave syrup)
  3. Pour 1 tsp of the chocolate into each petit four cup (I find that there’s enough for about 13 cups). Place the chocolates in the freezer until they solidify (about 10 minutes)
  4. Meanwhile, wash up the bain marie bowl and utensils, and dry thoroughly.  Prepare the coconut layer by grating or finely chopping the creamed coconut.  Place the coconut in the bain marie bowl and allow it to gently melt.
  5. Remove the chocolates from the freezer and pour 1tsp of the melted coconut into each petit four cup. If there’s any coconut left over, share it between the cases.  Place back in the freezer for another 10 minutes.
  6. Wash up the bain marie bowl and utensils again and dry thoroughly. Prepare the final chocolate layer by melting the remaining 30g of cacao butter in the bain marie bowl. Mix in the remaining 25g of cacao powder and 1-1.5 tbsp sweetener.
  7. Remove the chocolates from the freezer and pour in the final 1tsp of chocolate into each petit four cup.  Sprinkle with the finely chopped goji berries and nuts, then place back in the freezer for a final 10 minutes.
  8. Voila! Beautiful (and scrumptious!) raw chocolate coconut cups 🙂

[/print_this]

 

Valentine’s Giveaway Result
Thank  you so much for all the lovely comments you left me on Valentine’s Day 🙂  So who’s the lucky winner of my Valentine’s giveaway?

Well, I organised the comments into chronological order and pressed the magic button on random.org. 

The winner is the lovely Rachel who writes the fabulous blog My Naturally Frugal Family

Congratulations Rachel!  Six of  my raw chocolate coconut cups will be on their way to you shortly.

Have a wonderful week everyone!  xx

Sharing the Love with a Raw Chocolate Valentines Giveaway

Hi everyone!  I hope you’ve all had a great day so far!  I’ve had the most amazing afternoon making raw chocolate coconut cups whilst listening and singing along to Lana Del Rey’s album (which a certain person bought me for Valentines 😉  ) Oh, and I’ve also been acting as an assistant to the family’s principal Star Wars Lego Ship builder 😉

Anyway, this is just quick post to share some love <3.  Do you fancy trying some of the raw chocolates that I made today?

They really are scrummy 🙂

There’s are five ways you can enter my giveaway to win a box of six raw chocolates.  Each way counts as a separate entry.  So, if you do all five, you’ll increase your chances of winning five fold 🙂

  1. Leave me a comment below.
  2. Follow me on Twitter and leave me a comment below to let me know that you do.
  3. Tweet about the giveaway and leave me a comment below.
  4. ‘Like’ my blog page on Facebook (you can click the button on the top right hand side of my homepage) and leave me a comment below.
  5. Subscribe to receive notifications of my posts by email, and leave me a comment below.

A winner will be selected at random on Friday 17th February, 9pm GMT.

Good luck everybody!

I’ll leave you with today’s top Lana Del Rey sing along track.  Enjoy! xx

Yummy Scrummy Winner… and a Blu Animation!

Hello lovely readers! Hope you all had a fantastic weekend and a great start to the week!

Before I talk about anything else, I better put you out of your misery and announce the winner of the Yummy Scrummy giveaway.

A piece of Yummy Scrummy will be on its way to one lucky winner tomorrow...

To select the winner, I allocated all the commenters a number (except Dan as it didn’t seem to fair to give him the chance to win his own chocolate brownie 😉 ) and then used random.org to generate a number.

I’m excited to say that the lucky winner is…. Ragnhild (Vegan Aphrodite). Congratulations Ragnhild! I’ll be in touch shortly to get your postal address.

Thanks to everyone who took part. I wish I could send you all a Yummy Scrummy! I can’t do that BUT I have got another exciting giveaway planned for next month AND it has a chocolate theme again! I’ll post a note on Facebook/Twitter once I know which week the giveaway will fall in.

Before I sign off tonight, I just wanted to share a surreal moment that I had at the weekend. On Saturday morning, Lil’ L and I went along to the kids club at The Little Theatre Cinema in Bath. The session was described on the billboard as ‘Animation Extravaganza’. Considering the average age of kids at the club is around 5, I imagined that they would be showing a series of short cartoons like Tom & Jerry. I was wrong! Very wrong!

One animation involved a zombie (eyes popping, bits of brain dripping out, blood splattering the pavement) chasing a chicken down a road. Even Lil’ L buried his head into the back of the chair! I sat there in amusement, taking sneaky peaks at the other parents to see the looks on their faces 😉

Whilst still inappropriate for 5 year olds (IMO), the next animation absolutely blew me away. It’s by the graffiti artist Blu and is called ‘Big Bang Big Boom’. It’s described as ‘a short unscientific story about evolution and its consequences’. I found it utterly mesmerizing.

Maybe I’m just ‘not down’ with what 5 year olds are watching these days! 😉