Raw Cocoa, Date and Almond Energy Bars!

So, in light of the whole 'new year new me' stuff that's flying around for a few more weeks until it reaches it's February demise, I decided to embark on a baking spree yesterday. A baking spree of nutritional, guilt-free, goodness. And, I have to say I have been very, very pleasantly surprised with how wonderfully edible 'green' cooking is. Seriously, I had my suspicions that it would resemble eating cardboard but these little fella's are genuinely divine and I would recommend them to anybody. Being a serious sufferer of the dreaded sweet tooth (to the point where I would rather eat a family sized bar of dairy milk than a chicken curry), I was in desperate need of something to satisfy my feminine cravings without the added guilt. While I can't say that these beat eating an entire packet of minstrels in the happiness-spectrum, I CAN say that they are really impressively tasty for their worryingly low sugar content.

What makes them even better is that they take a grand total of about 2 minutes to prepare (you chuck everything into a blender et voila - work done) and they don't even need cooking, just cooling in the fridge. Little slices of pure chocolate heaven maybe not, but definitely knocking on the golden gates with no baggage at all.

2 cups of pitted dates

2 cups of cashew nuts 

½ cup of chopped almonds

¾ cup of cocoa powder

A pinch of salt

2 tbsp of vanilla extract

Some cold water

And you'll need a food processor and a shallow baking tray lined with grease proof paper!

So basically, pop the nuts, almonds, salt and cocoa powder into the blender until mixed together into slightly coarse mixture. Add the vanilla extract and slowly add tiny drops of water while blending until it reaches a dry but doughy consistency. You don't want it too runny or it won't set in the fridge! Flatten it out evenly onto the baking tray and leave in the fridge for about an hour. Then chop it up into whatever size pieces you like and enjoy!

Seriously worth a go for anyone with an insatiable chocolate appetite whose attempting to eat that little bit better and cleaner. I'm a convert.

New Years Resolution!

Yep, I know - I'm really late with this whole New Years Resolution thing but better late than never! I have been trying for a days to summarize concisely what exactly I want to do this year and, admittedly, I never really make proper resolutions beyond ''try to eat clean' and 'exercise' - neither of which ever seems to come to fruition. This year, while trying to make resolutions, everything seemed too precise, too contrived and just too bloody not-going-to-last-past-January-ish. Until I wandered along this little nugget, which seems to encapsulate everything I was trying to say but in about 1/100th of the words.

2015. Let's be grateful!

Christmas Cookies!

So. I may have got a little bit snap happy over these little beauties but am I going to apologise? Nope. I'm also pretty pleased (and slightly smug) to mention that they don't even taste half bad, probably owing to the extra million tbsp's of vanilla essence that Mikey added to them rather than any baking expertise on my behalf. However, I'm not proud to admit that at least six cookies perished in the baking process. Because Pinterest stopped me checking the time. Obviously.

I used this short and sweet recipe.