In the bowl of a standing mixer stir coconut oil until creamy with no lumps (if oil is too thick set bowl in warm water). Add nuts, cocoa powder and sweetener, mixing after each ingredient. Mix the dried fruit in.
Spread fudge into 7×11 or 8×8 inch pan and refrigerate or freeze until firm. Cut into squares and serve. Keep refrigerated.
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or chopped chocolate chunks
Over medium-high heat in a saucepan, heat honey, cream, coconut cream concentrate, vanilla and salt.
Stir constantly using a whisk – mixture will bubble – you want it to bubble lightly – continue to stir until mixture reaches about 260 degrees on a candy thermometer.
Turn off heat and stir in almonds and coconut.
Grease 8×8 pan – pour in caramel mixture and allow to cool or put in refrigerator to cool faster.
Once cool, cut into desired shape and size and place on wax paper – melt chocolate and brush on top of caramels – allow chocolate to harden and they’re ready to eat!
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease cookie sheets with coconut oil.
Mix together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.
Cream together butter, coconut oil and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, add vanilla. Add almonds followed by flour mixture, 1/2 cup at a time.
Roll dough out between 2 sheets of wax or parchment paper and cut into circles. Cut a smaller circle in half of the cookies.
Transfer to prepared cookie sheets and bake for 12 minutes, or until lightly browned. Move to wire racks to cool.
When completely cool, assemble. Place a small dollop of fruit spread on the cookie without the hole and cover with a cookie with the hole. Dust powder sugar over the top (optional).
This is my latest creation using our newest product: Coconut Peanut Butter! What is Coconut Peanut Butter? Coconut Peanut Butter is a wonderfully smooth and creamy blend of coconut and peanut butter; a new twist on the old favorite. I never thought the two would be such a perfect match, but they are! The spread is creamier then regular peanut butter and a bit sweeter too.
These delectable little candies are a great addition to any Christmas cookie and candy plate! They’re rich, creamy and very much a candy. They just melt in your mouth! Hence the name: Meltaways. The pretty, creamy peanut butter and coconut swirls go round and round, just begging you to bite into them. Even non coconut lovers will find them hard to pass up, and peanut butter lovers will find them irresistible.
The problem is they’re addicting. I mean addicting. They’re dangerous. If you have a wild sweet tooth you’d better watch it around these little candies. Give them away, freeze them until Christmas time, hide them in the back of the refrigerator, make them only once a year, or make sure you’re not the only one eating them. Just don’t let them keep staring at you from their pretty perch on the serving plate.
Next time I make these I’ll add more Coconut Peanut Butter. I used about 1/4 cup per ball of “dough” but next time will probably use about 1/3 of a cup or more. If you use more then 1/4 cup, I’d recommend sticking the whole round into the refrigerator to firm up a bit so that the spread doesn’t all ooze out during the rolling. After it’s firmer, take it back out and roll it up. After that, judge whether you need to stick it back in before slicing. I didn’t refrigerate before rolling the dough into a log so I refrigerated it after it was rolled up and then sliced it after 10 minutes of chilling time.
So that’s that! Be sure to order a jar or two of the new Coconut Peanut Butter so you can make these wonderful little candies yourself! They truly are a must try. They’re rich, creamy, coconutty, peanutty, melty, gluten free and no bake. Can it get any better then that?
Combine all ingredients except Coconut Peanut Butter until a soft but not sticky dough forms. Divide into two balls.
Roll each ball out into a 6 inch circle (or desired size) between two sheets of wax or parchment paper. Spread with at least 1/4 cup coconut peanut butter. Add more if desired. If you used about 1/3 cup of Coconut Peanut Butter or more, refrigerate un-rolled round for about 5 minutes, or until firmer.
Roll dough spread with Coconut Peanut Butter up into a log. Refrigerate for 10-15 minutes or until firm enough to slice.
Take logs out and slice into 1/2 inch pieces. Keep refrigerated.
Life without gluten can be full of obstacles and variations, but that shouldn’t mean you have to settle for something less.
Take cake for an example. Gluten-free cakes will never be as good as the wheat ones, right? WRONG! I myself am not gluten intolerant, but I do know what it’s like to have to give something up because it’s not healthy and try to find an alternative. I don’t like to settle for something less; for me taste is a very close second to healthy.
My biggest goal in producing gluten-free recipes is “foolproof-ness.” Cake was a big one, and I was eager to try it. This was right about the time that I was really getting into my little coconut flour frenzy and trying to come up with as many recipes as possible for the product. Cake was something I hadn’t tried yet, but I was ready to start experimenting.
The first thing was ideas. I wanted to do a yellow and chocolate cake, but decided on the chocolate first. I found a chocolate cake recipe I liked, and began the long process of taking it apart, adding, taking away, testing, testing, testing. By the time I was done it was a totally different recipe. It was by far the longest time I ever spent developing a recipe; even longer then my Coconut Flour Brownies. I tried, and tried again. Each time there always seemed to be something wrong with it. The biggest issue was the dryness. It always seemed too dry. The more I experimented, the more the amount of eggs grew. Soon they had reached a rather alarming amount, but by that time I finally had the perfect gluten free chocolate cake.
It was moist, fluffy, chocolaty, and perfectly foolproof. Many times I’ve made them for company dessert (many with little kids by the way) and unless I told them they were gluten free they would’ve never known or suspected and would’ve just kept on happily wolfing it down.
No, no, seriously. It’s really that good. If you make it, follow the recipe exactly and please don’t change a thing and then tell me it doesn’t work. It really does work. The eggs are the most important part, and they definitely cannot be changed.
While you’re mixing the eggs and butter together, don’t panic if the butter separates into little sesame seed shapes. That’s normal, and doesn’t bother anything at all. I also recommend having the butter still just a tad bit cold, not near melting point.
This recipe can be made as a 2, 8 inch layer cake, a 9 inch layer cake, or cupcakes. I like to use a buttercream frosting for this cake but pretty much anything that goes with chocolate will be good on this.
If any of you try the recipe, please feel free to let me know how you liked it. 🙂
Gluten Free Coconut Flour Chocolate Cake
Prepared by Sarah Shilhavy, Photo by Jeremiah Shilhavy
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9 inch or 8 inch layer pans with coconut oil and dust with cocoa powder.
In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine butter and sugar, and beat together for about 2 minutes. Add eggs in one at a time and beat high speed for about 3 minutes. Add in the vanilla while beating the eggs and butter mixture. In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients together and add alternately with the milk to the butter mixture. Beat batter for about five minutes on high speed. Spoon batter into the two prepared cake pans and smoothen out tops.
Bake in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into the center of cake comes out clean. Place pans on wire rack and cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans. Cool cakes completely before frosting. Use your favorite frosting to frost the cake.
Peppermint Chocolate cake variation: add 1 teaspoon peppermint extract to batter before pouring into pans and mix well. Frost cake with peppermint frosting or frosting of your choice.
Cupcakes: Make recipe as directed but spoon batter into muffin cups and bake for about 26-30 minutes. Frost after cupcakes have cooled completely. Makes about 24 cupcakes.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9×13 inch baking pan.
Mix sugars, coconut oil, vanilla and eggs in medium bowl. Mix flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in separate bowl. Add the flour mixture in gradually, mixing until smooth after each addition. Spread batter in pan, and sprinkle with chopped pecans and chocolate chips.
Bake 30-35 minutes or until toothpick or cake-tester inserted in center comes out clean. Serve with cold milk after they’ve cooled.
Variations –
Melt caramel, adding about 1 tablespoon of milk to thin it and drizzle it over brownies.
You can also substitute walnuts for pecans.
Dark chocolate chunks can be chopped up and put on instead of the chocolate chips.
Mix half of the chocolate chips in the batter before putting it in the pan.
I give you a method for melting the coconut oil while greasing the pan, saving you a dish. You can certainly melt the coconut oil in one pan and grease the pan separately. Also, I add the coconut oil last just in case it is still pretty warm. The eggs already mixed with the other ingredients provides a bit of a buffer in case the oil is still too warm. Scrambled egg cake is not what we’re after here.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Measure out coconut oil and place in an 8″x8″ pan. Place the pan in the oven to melt the coconut oil.
While the coconut oil is melting, whisk the eggs, coconut milk, honey, vanilla and orange zest together.
Once the coconut oil is melted (probably around five minutes or less), remove the pan from the oven and let it cool while you mix in the rest of your ingredients. Combine coconut flour, baking powder and salt. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet.
Once your pan is cooled enough to handle, carefully swirl your coconut oil around your pan in order to grease all sides. Then pour the coconut oil into the batter and mix until all lumps are gone.
Pour the batter into your greased pan and place on the middle rack of the oven. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until browned on top and a toothpick comes out clean. Place the cake on a cooling rack.
After the cake has cooled a bit, but is still warm, poke holes all over the top with a fork. Juice the orange half right over the whole cake, making sure to evenly distribute the juice.
Orange Coconut Oil Frosting
Be sure to melt your coconut oil in a glass bowl. I do this by putting the bowl over a small pan of simmering water.
Mix all ingredients into warm coconut oil. You are now going to place the bowl into the freezer in order to cool it down. It is very important to check on it every couple of minutes to catch it before it gets too cold. You want to take it out of the freezer right when it starts to get cloudy.
At this point the cold bowl (and your cool kitchen) will continue to turn the liquid oil into a solid. Continue to whisk the frosting as it gets cloudier and cloudier and eventually turns into a whipped butter consistency. The idea is to get a bit of air into it.
Once it is to a whipped (very soft) butter consistency plop it onto your cooled cake. Frost it very quickly before the coconut oil hardens. It will seem like a pretty thin frosting, but it is just enough.
Prepared by Sarah Shilhavy, Photo by Jeremiah Shilhavy
I recently made these Chocolate Coconut Protein Bars, and they were pretty good! The triple amount of coconut provides the energy element, and the protein powder gives you the protein. It’s the best of both worlds; energy and protein rolled into one bar. Why make both a protein and energy bar when you can have them both in one?
The bars were pretty delicate. If you want them moister you could add another egg or more oil if you wanted a higher oil serving. Either way, this recipe is pretty forgiving so feel free to play around with it a bit until you get the desired texture and results. I made a half batch and pressed it into a greased square glass pan and then cut it into bars. That way it comes out looking more like a bar instead of a cookie or something.
The bars are very filling; you can only eat so much. The chia seeds expand in your stomach and give you that “full” feeling pretty quickly, which is a good thing.
Be sure to check the recipe out, and comment if you have any questions or comments of your own.
Preheat oven to 375. Grease cookie sheet(s) with extra coconut oil.
Melt oil if needed and in a large bowl stir in remaining ingredients with the oil until well blended. Place spoon sized mounds unto prepared cookie sheets and pat down slightly into bars.
Bake in preheated oven for 14-15 minutes. Don’t overcook.
