A Life in Words

Ingredients

125g butter – or coconut oil, as I used

2 tbsp maple syrup

¾ cup rice flour

¼ almond meal

1 cup oats

1 cup dessicated coconut

½ cup sugar – I used dextrose (powdered glucose) but rapadura is preferred

2 tbsp water

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method
Preheat oven to 175 deg C. Grease or line two baking trays. Melt the butter and maple syrup together in a saucepan over a low heat. Mix together the flour, oats, coconut, almond meal and sugar in a bowl. Stir the water and the bicarbonate of soda into the butter and syrup mixture, then add it to the dry mixture, stirring thoroughly. Once combined, spoon mixture into balls. Place them on the baking trays, spaced well apart and flatten (with spatula/back of spoon/clean fingers!) Bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden. Cool on wire wracks. Enjoy!
Makes about 10-15 biscuits.

My Notes

I rarely follow recipes to a ‘T’ so play around with the composition of your dry ingredients (esp. the almond meal & flour) if you like. I almost always put less sugar in than a recipe asks for (the original recipe I used here called for ¾cup) because I am continually ‘training’ my tastebuds away from ‘Sweet’. The dextrose (glucose) I use is half as sweet as normal sugar because there is no fructose present, however the processing required to create dextrose is less than ideal. I’d also try to use organic ingredients first, where possible.

Ingredients

½ cup coconut oil

½ cup+ powdered cacao

Your choice of sweetener – fine dry ingredient, e.g. caster sugar or liquid, e.g. maple syrup, to taste. (I’ve used dextrose & manuka honey & had varying degrees of success with both!)

Method:

Place oil in a saucepan on the lowest possible heat, and when liquefied, stir in cacao, then your sweetener. If a dry ingredient (eg caster sugar), stir until it has dissolved, but be careful not to spend too much time over heat or it will begin to thicken, and become too syrupy.

Place baking paper in a flat dish and pour the mixture in. Set in the freezer anywhere from 3-15 minutes, depending how thick the ‘block’ is. Remove and ‘smash’ into bit sized pieces!

My Notes:

SO many ideas! I have played around with this basic recipe so much – had some amazing wins and some still-edible-losses.

If the mixture seems too runny (as I have thought in the past) I simply add more cacao (richer taste again) or almond meal, or dessicated coconut….some dry ingredient. I even added soaked dates once and made a thick fudge-type chocolate (which didn’t hold its shape so well). Natural peppermint flavour or vanilla essence work well too.

If you want it to look better you can also use moulds. I haven’t bought any specific chocolate moulds, but my old heart-shaped silicone ice cube trays I got from Ikea years ago worked at treat…and because the coconut oil melts quite quickly, there’s no need to ‘grease’ the moulds: the chocolate will slide out quite easily after a few minutes out of the freezer (unless it’s winter).

The ‘deeper’ the mould, the more time required to set, but you could also try popping something in …the ‘middle’. For example, while I haven’t yet tried it, I’m thinking (coz I LOVE Lindt Blueberry Dark Chocolate) of immersing a blueberry into each of those heart-shaped moulds one day. I’ll let you know how that goes….