Ideas for Cooking with Cocoa Butter : No-Bake Cacao Date Loaded Energy Bars & Cacao butter keto blondies

There's often a bit of confusion around Cacao Butter. Yet, once you become familiar with the potential of Cacao Butter, it's hard not to become truly enamored.

Right from the start, Cacao Butter is a bit of a misnomer. There's no butter or dairy in Cacao Butter, nor is Cacao Butter particularly buttery in flavor. Rather, Cacao Butter is technically an oil. Traditionally, when making chocolate, peeled Cacao Beans are crushed into Nibs, and then pressed and ground with very high pressure. This process creates two products: the dry, brown, powdery Cacao "cake" otherwise known as Cacao Powder, and the pure Cacao fat, otherwise known as Cacao Butter. Cacao Butter looks like a golden-hued oil when melted at low heat, and hardens into a cream-colored solid when cooled to room temperature. Cacao Butter is the reason why your chocolate bars taste so smooth, and why the chocolate chips in cookies are hard to the touch, but melt in your mouth.

Before using Cacao Butter, it's important to fully understand its three main properties:

  • Cacao Butter has very little chocolate flavor.
  • Cacao Butter melts very easily over low heat.
  • Cacao Butter will always return to its hardened state when cooled.

Cacao Butter is an exquisite ingredient through and through. Cacao Butter is a nourishing edible oil containing healthy fats along with a host of antioxidants. It's easy to see why this unique ingredient belongs with all your favorite superfoods! Here are two recipes I would like to share with you~

Recipe 1 : No-Bake Cacao Date Loaded Energy Bars

Ingredients: 

Instructions:

  1. Begin by lining a square baking pan (about 8×8 inch) with parchment paper and setting it aside.
  2. In a food processor, add the cashew nuts, coconut flakes, Cacao Butter, and the pumpkin seeds. Pulse for a few seconds (10-15), until everything is broken down into small pieces.
  3. Now, add in the dates, Cacao Powder , dark chia seeds, Coconut Nectar and pinch of sea salt. Pulse for a few more seconds (about 7-8), until all ingredients are well combined.                                                        
  4. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking pan and evenly spread out everything using a rubber spatula, keeping it about 1/2 to 1-inch in thickness so that bars aren't too flat.
  5. Cover baking pan with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator until firm, about 2-3 hours. Better if kept even longer to ensure full hardness.
  6. Once firm, gently uplift mixture out of the baking pan using the parchment paper and cut into medium-sized rectangles or squares. The shape is based on preference.

Tips:

Storage: Refrigerate leftover bars for up to a week in a sealed zip loc bag or tightly sealed container.

Recipe 2 : Cacao butter keto blondies

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line an 8" square baking pan with some parchment paper. Next, measure out all of the ingredients.
  2. Put Cacao Butter into a microwave-safe bowl. Let it melt in a microwave for a minute and a half. Stir the butter until there are no lumps left. If needed, microwave for another minute or so. Set aside to cool. When cooled, stir in the coconut oil.
  3. Using a hand electric mixer, mix the eggs, Coconut Nectar, vanilla bean seeds, salt, and vanilla extract for a couple of minutes. Add the Coconut Milk Powder and mix again.
  4. Pour in the coconut oil and mix until the mixture gets denser. Depending on the temperature of the ingredients, the density might vary from almost liquid to creamy. Try to have all the ingredients at room temperature.
  5. Sieve and combine the almond flour and cream of tartar. Add this flour mixture to the cream and combine well with a rubber spatula. Add the Cacao Paste and stir well again.
  6. Add 1 tablespoon of almond and 1 tablespoon of dark chia seeds. Combine using a spatula.
  7. Put the mixture into the prepared baking pan and spread it out evenly using a spatula.
  8. Put in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. After this time, the toothpick will be clean when inserted into the center, but the blondies will remain somewhat juicy in the middle. Don’t over-bake.
  9. When done baking, take the whole batch out of the pan together with the parchment paper and let it cool down. When cooled, cut into 20 more or less equal size blondies. 
Tips:  Best served the next day.

     

    Read More : Candied Cacao Nibs     Flourless Chocolate Cake



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