Did Someone Say, Chocolate?

Coming off of a month and a half with no sugar (not even natural, except one piece a fruit a day), I was excited to bring back in honey and maple syrup. One of my first undertakings was making hot chocolate. Right before my cleanse (candida), I discovered that letting hot chocolate simmer in a small crock pot is amazing. I mean, it puts most cafe's hot chocolates to shame -- it is super rich without the processed sugars:

Hot Chocolate
1-3 tbs cocoa powder
2-3 tbs honey and/or maple syrup
1 cup coconut milk
1-3 tsp of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, chili powder, cayenne, chipotle (use the latter spices for spicy hot chocolate)
1 tsp vanilla (optional)

Place in mini crock pot for 30 minutes to 2 hours. The honey should be dissolved when ready. Stir well and pour. (You can simmer it on the stove and take it off before it boils, but there's something more enjoyable about the slow cooker route.)

It has also been an ongoing quest for me to devise a recipe for chocolate chips with no common allergens and sugar, as no such thing exists on the market. I am getting closer! There is a book called Raw Chocolate and it has an awesome chocolate bar recipe that can be concocted in a food dehydrator. The drawback to this is that the cacao paste and butter needed are really expensive; however, it does make about 5 cups or so of chocolate chips so I stash them in the freezer and spread out the usage. This raw chocolate, once cut up, does in fact work great for chocolate chips in breads and muffins or ice cream. However, it does not work so well for cookies. The viscosity is so low that when melted it runs everywhere. On the other hand, it does successfully re-solidify. :)

Therefore, chopped raw chocolate is the route to go when in a confined space such as a bread pan. Okay, so there is still the dilemma with cookies...

Thankfully Sunspire recently brought back their grain-sweetened chocolate chips to the market. (Downfall is that they contain a small amount of soy. I can work with that, but it would be better if it had no soy. Alas!) So:

Chocolate Chip Cookies:
2 1/4 cups brown rice flour
1/2 tsp xanthan gum or guar gum
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup melted butter or coconut oil
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup melted honey
1 tsp vanilla extract (add a little more if you want softer cookies)
2 Ener-G egg replacers (or, if you want your cookies to have a hint of banana, use one banana instead)
1 package (12 oz) of Sunspire Grain-Sweetened Chocolate Chips
1/2 cup shredded coconut

Whisk together all dry ingredients. Whisk all wet ingredients. Combine both mixtures together. Add in chocolate and coconut. Refrigerate mixture for an 30-60 minutes, or until firm. Use scoop to distribute on cookie sheet. (If you want small cookies, use a small scoop. If you want larger cookies, use a larger scoop.)

Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes. Half way through use heat proof spatula (I prefer the bamboo ones) to flatten cookies. When done, they should be lightly brown. Let cool.

If you want to take it further, dip half of cookie into a chocolate mixture. This recipe here was successful for chocolate dipping and coating. After I mixed it all together, I placed it in my tempering kit -- which keeps the chocolate temperature stable -- as I dipped half the cookie in and then placed in back on the parchment. At first I had my doubts, as the chocolate had the consistency of hot fudge. It tasted great, but not exactly what I was going for. Thankfully, after I set the finished cookies in the fridge overnight, the chocolate hardened perfectly. (I poured the remaining chocolate in to a mold and froze it. It tasted like fudge.)