All About Raw Chocolate And Mocha Truffle Bites Recipe

SO, WHAT IS RAW CHOCOLATE?

The term ‘raw chocolate’ frequently puzzles people, so we’re going to explain exactly what it means when it comes to raw chocolate and ours in particular.
‘Raw’ doesn’t solely refer to the ingredients, but also as to how we then make our chocolate, let’s explain that further…
At Ripe our Raw Chocolate uses just three ingredients. These ingredients are
non-processed and are in their most natural state – therefore they can be referred to as ‘raw’ ingredients.
We use:

1. ORGANIC RAW CACAO POWDER

Unlike regular cocoa powder, where the beans are roasted at high temperatures and then ground, the beans that go into raw cacao powder are dried in the sun. This means that they not only maintain a whole host of nutrients (magnesium, iron calcium etc), that are otherwise lost, but also the flavour is very different too and you don’t have the same bitterness that you might come to expect from a conventional dark chocolate. Think of a dark roast coffee compared to a coffee bean: where the bean is lightly roasted, the flavour is completely different. 

2. ORGANIC RAW CACAO BUTTER

The butter is cold pressed and is never heated to a high temperature so, in comparison with its processed counterpart (cocoa butter), it retains more nutrients.

3. PURE MAPLE SYRUP

Maple syrup mainly comes from Canada, where maple trees are ‘tapped’ to remove the sap which is then heated to allow the water to evaporate, leaving a concentrated maple syrup – as we know it. Uniquely rich in flavour, it is also contains manganese, zinc and calcium.

Next, we take these three very carefully selected ingredients and gently heat them together taking care not to heat above 42 degrees, again so as to maintain it as a ‘raw’ chocolate. We do everything by hand from the melting of the cacao butter through to the individual wrapping of the bars. All is done with a lot of time, care and attention, in small batches in our kitchen on the edge of the Lake District.
We love the silky smooth almost praline texture that the combination of these three hero ingredients plus a lot of love creates, we hope you enjoy our Raw Chocolate as much as we do!

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MOCHA TRUFFLE BITES

Ingredients
200g sunflower seeds
200g dates
1 + ½ bars of Ripe’s 80% raw chocolate
1 large cup of strong good quality coffee or two small cups
1 teaspoon of finely ground good quality coffee

This is such a simple recipe made using only 4 ingredients! It's completely grain free, nut free, vegan, gluten free and refined sugar free.

1.  Firstly, put the sunflower seeds into a food processor and blitz until they form a ‘butter.’ This will take a little while so don’t be tempted to stop them before they are ready (you will need a fairly powerful food processor to achieve this).

2.  While you're waiting for the sunflower seeds, pour the freshly made coffee onto your dates and leave to soak.  They need to be just covered and will take roughly ten minutes of soaking time.

3.  As your dates are soaking you can prepare a Bain Marie for melting the chocolate; simply place a large heatproof bowl over a pan of cold water. Break up the chocolate and pop it into the bowl over a low heat, bring it to a simmer and melt the chocolate slowly.

4.  By now, your sunflower seeds should have formed a butter and your dates should be nice and soft. Strain the dates and add them to the mixture (hold on to the coffee in case you need to add it in later). Keep an eye on the chocolate making sure it doesn’t get too hot.

5.  When your sunflower and date mixture is all blended, taste a small quantity and add the dry ground coffee to taste.

6.  The mixture should now be ready to roll into balls (if it’s not wet enough you can add a little of the leftover coffee).

7.  Pop the balls onto a cooling rack then, placing the cooling rack onto a (preferably lined) tray, pour over your melted chocolate to coat them. We transferred the chocolate to a jug to make pouring a little easier. The lined tray underneath should catch all the chocolate drips, which you can save for snacking later!

Place your mocha truffle bites into the fridge to cool before enjoying them. 
Don't forget to tag us on social media @ripeeat so we can see all your scrumptious creations!