Coconut Butter

Yesterday I told you how awesome Chocolate-Covered Katie's vegan chocolate fudge is. Well, here's how to make the key ingredient, Coconut Butter. Trust me, this will revolutionise your baking, cooking and eating life!

Coconut Butter Recipe

Ingredients

• Coconuts
• Coconut Oil

Method

1. Take the hair off the coconut.
2. Pierce the eyes and drain the coconut.
3. Wrap the coconut in a towel and beat it with a hammer until it shatters. (This bit is immensely satisfying!)
4. Pry the coconut flesh out of the shell, then carefully cut off the brown skin outside of the coconut flesh.
5. Use a juice extractor to get the coconut milk out of the coconut flesh (Hmm, coconut milk. Sooo good in cocoa!)
6. Lightly toast the coconut in a pan, over a low heat. Toast until just brown.
7. Once the coconut has cooled, blend it in a food processor until smooth.
8. Add coconut oil and blend until it looks like coconut butter - smooth and creamy and awesome.

Coconut butter is great as frosting on cakes and cupcakes, spread on bread or toast, or eaten from the jar! (Assuming it makes it into a jar). You can use coconut butter to make the fudge yesterday, or as an ingredient in baking, in the place of nut butter or flour.

FUDGE!

We LOVE Chocolate-Covered Katie. Pretty much everything on her blog is awesome and we've tried all of it! Well, all the things we're allowed, anyway. An Aunty Em permanent favourite is the vegan sugar-free chocolate fudge. Ever since we started down the gluten-free/dairy-free/sugar-free road we've tried to create a substitute for fudge, one of the few things we could never replicate. However, thanks to Chocolate-Covered Katie we now have the perfect solution with the added virtues of good health and veganism (selective, you understand).

 We've been battling to get the coconut butter in this recipe perfect, but today we had a major breakthrough (which I will post about tomorrow). The result was awesome, delicious, smooth fudgey heaven!

Chocolate-Covered Katie's Sugar-free Vegan Chocolate Fudge

Ingredients

• 4 tbsp coconut butter (see tomorrow's post)
• 1/2 a large very ripe banana
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)
• Pinch of salt
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder*
• 2 tbsp honey* (or to taste)

Method

1. Make sure your coconut butter is melted before use. (Freshly home-made coconut butter is smooth and soft already but sets if left for a while). 
2. Combine all ingredients in a small blender (or double the recipe for a bigger blender).
3. Smooth the fudge into a plastic container or chocolate molds. (Katie says plastic containers work well because it's so easy to pop the fudge out once it's set).
4. Refrigerate until set, then cut up and serve (or gobble!).

Yummmm .....

* Always, wherever possible, use pure, raw organic ingredients.