Raw Valentines Day Chocolate Jaffa Cream Cookies

In lieu of valentines looming over I decided to put my creative talents to the test and create a sweet treat that you can wrap up and present to your special someone or you could eat them yourself whilst perusing the desperate dating adverts on Craiglist.  These cookies are much more personal and healthy that the foil wrapped store bought stuff. They are healthy(ish); raw vegan and have no crappy filler ingredients like flour, dairy or eggs. They are however very high in fat. That won't stop you though.


There are three components:

• Biscuit base
• Orange cream
• Chocolate coating

Biscuit Base

• 1 cup hazelnuts (brazil nuts also work well)

• 10-13 pitted soaked dates (depending on size)

• 2 tablespoons cacao

• 1 pink of pink salt

• 3 drops vanilla stevia/vanilla 

Method

Soak the nuts in filtered water for eight hours prior. This will greatly assist in digestion. Throw the nuts into the food processor and blitz until finely ground. Think breadcrumbs. Add the remaining ingredients and blitz until they form a crumbly doughy mixture. It should be sticky and hold shape when pressed together.

Now to give them shape. I bought some cookie cutters from Target. I like them because they are quite deep allowing for thick cookies. When pushing the dough into the cookie moulds ensure that you scoop it towards the edges so that it creates a border/crust around the outside. This will allow the filling to pool on top of the cookie and not leak over the edges and make a mess.

You can either pop the bases into the dehydrator on low for a few hours or into the freezer to let them harden up.

Orange Cream

• 3 cups of cashews
• 2 oranges
• 1 carrot
• Orange stevia drops (not imperative but adds oomph)
• 2 tablespoons of coconut nectar
• 3 tablespoons coconut oil

Method

1. Soak Cashews for 30-40 minutes
2. Zest the oranges
3. Juice the oranges and the carrot. collect the carrot pulp as set aside, This gives the cream the glossy orange colour. 
4. Throw cashews, zest, coconut nectar, oil, orange stevia, carrot pulp and one third of orange carrot juice into the blender. Puree in a high speed blender slowly adding more juice until the consistency of thickened cream is reached.
5. Spread onto the cookie bases and allow to set in the freezer for 20 minutes.

Chocolate Coating

• 1/2 cup of cacao
• 4 tablespoons coconut nectar
• 2/3 cup cacao butter
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 5 drops vanilla stevia
• pinch of pink salt

Method

1. Using the double boiler method, melt the cacao butter
2. Combine the cacao and salt. Mix and sift any of the lumps.
3. Once the cacao butter has melted combine liquid and dry ingredients together until smooth. The chocolate should be a runny, glossy consistency.  Add additional melted cacao butter to reach the desired consistency.
4. Remove cookies from freezer and gently spread the chocolate frosting on top. Return to the freezer to set.
5. These can be stored in the fridge or freezer.

These are easily adaptable to using almond butter, raw nutella, mint, vanilla or cherry flavours instead of the orange cream.


Best of luck

Kaitlin