Apologies for the lack of Friday Fives recently; Friday’s always seem to be busy here, with plenty of guests arriving in time for the weekend! To make up for it, I thought I’d share our recent foray into the world of Raw Chocolate, which started in time for our Detox Retreat.

We’d both heard of raw chocolate before, but never had the ingredients to hand, or seen it offered elsewhere. Raw chocolate is made from the un-fired cacao bean, before it is turned into what we know as chocolate. As the cacao bean isn’t fired at the high temperatures needed for traditional chocolate, the supernutrients are contained, meaning that chocolate is good for you! Mix these ground nibs into smoothies, nibble them as a snack or sprinkle them on cereal, and you’ll experience an incredible rush of energy. Woody Harrelson and Matthew McGonaghy often mix raw cacao smoothies and go running in the forests of California for hours on end.

Now, the taste isn’t quite as satisfying if your pallete is used to the creamy taste of milk chocolate (as mine so lovingly is). But if you’re a fan of good quality dark chocolate, then you’ll really enjoy our recipe…

You’ll need equal amounts of raw cacao butter, raw cacao nibs and agave syrup. We started off with 100g of each, which was anough for about 30 chocolates.
Put some boiling water in a pan, and put a perspex bowl over this. Do not put the pan on the heat – you want to melt the cacao butter but not heat it. You could also leave the butter in a warm place to melt it down. When it’s gooey, mix in the ground nibs (you’ll need a coffee grinder to do this) and the agave syrup. Mix this well. Pour into ice cube trays and leave in the fridge to set. About four hours later, they’ll be hard enough to eat, just like ‘normal’ chocolate!

When you’ve made the above once, experiment. Throw in superfoods like goji or acai berries, increase the syrup, or add honey or nuts. Go wild! And tell us how it all works out.

Read the Original Article at Ard Nahoo Eco Retreat Blog