I just realized that I’ve turned on my oven maybe once in the past week. What a glorious thing.
What could be worthy of turning on the oven during a heat wave, you might ask? Two words: sweet potatoes! Yes, even in the summer, heat wave be damned, I need my sweet potato fix.
This is my favourite way to eat sweet potatoes lately: Dice the sweet potato (leave the skin on), roast until tender, and then toss the cooked potato with coconut oil, sea salt, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Finally – and here’s the best part – a generous spoonful of hemp seeds sprinkled on for good measure. The hemp seeds stick to the coconut oil, coating every delicious bite of sweet potato. I seriously drool when I think about it!
But this post isn’t about roasting things like a crazy person when it’s 40C with humidity, it’s about not roasting things! Aside from my precious sweet potatoes, I’ve been relying heavily on raw foods to make up much of my diet. Raw Pad Thai, Detox Tabbouleh, hummus and veggie wraps, fruit galore, and a huge smoothie every single morning, just to name a few. Summer rules and winter drools. Period.
Speaking of drooling. These raw almond butter cups! Oh my goodness. Eric declared them one of his favourite treats and this is coming from a non-almond butter fan. I’m not buying it, Eric. I have a peanut butter cup recipe on the blog already (oh, and peanut butter cups in a jar, let’s not forget), but I wanted to make something with the batch of raw almond butter I made recently.
For the almond base, I initially tried a combo of almond butter, coconut oil, and sweetener, which was super tasty, but the cups melted and were pretty greasy. In an effort to make the base more substantial, I reduced the almond butter and added in almond meal and a touch of oat flour. It was the perfect solution. Not only did it hold up better, but it tasted like cookie dough! What’s not to love about that? noooooothing.
I used a mini silicone muffin holder since they are so flexible and I just popped the cups out after freezing. Easy! You can certainly use a regular muffin tin lined with paper liners though. For the thick chocolate coating, I made my own chocolate using cocoa powder, coconut oil, and sweetener. Feel free to simply use melted dark chocolate if that floats your boat! I added some sliced almonds on top before freezing which added a nice crunch.
As you can see the chocolate topping started to melt during my photo shoot because it was a gazillion degrees, so I recommend enjoying these straight from the freezer for best results. Either way, I wasn’t complaining too much!