One of my favorite treats I used to love eating was a chocolate bar with almonds (or chocolate covered almonds or M&M almonds...basically I love anything with chocolate and almonds). I decided to make a quick and easy confection that would allow me to enjoy my favorite combination and also add in some toasted coconut, too. Sort of an Almond Joyous Coconut Patty. While I have mixed melted chocolate with almonds together before and even added coconut to it and made little chocolate almond clusters, I was in the mood for something a little different. I melted a 3.5-ounce Green & Black's 85% chocolate bar (it only takes about 1-1/2 minutes to melt in the microwave) and then made a sweetened almond butter concoction (using
Swerve, almond butter and coconut oil) and combined both of them together, then stirred in big toasted coconut flakes and roasted almonds and dropped them onto some parchment paper and chilled them. I was able to make 10 treats from 1 chocolate bar...how great is that? I snapped a photo below as well as included the easy peasy recipe. Enjoy!
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Almond Joyous Coconut Patties
Ingredients:
1 3.5-ounce dark chocolate bar (I used Green & Black's 85%; you can use 70% if you prefer), chopped
1/4 cup almond butter
2 tablespoons
Swerve Sweetener, Confectioners Style (or powdered erythritol)
1 teaspoon coconut oil
1/2 cup toasted unsweetened coconut (I used the large flakes)
1/2 cup roasted almonds
Directions:
In a small bowl, mix almond butter, sweetener and coconut oil together; set aside.
Place chocolate in a small bowl and melt in microwave for about 1-1/2 minutes, in 30 second intervals, stirring between each. Once melted, stir almond butter into the melted chocolate and mix until well combined. Stir in coconut and almonds.
Drop by heaped tablespoonfuls into patties on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet (makes about 10) and refrigerate until hardened (to make thicker patties, allow mixture to cool and thicken up a little bit before dropping onto parchment paper to reduce spreading). Keeps best refrigerated.
10 comments:
Hi GGC,
Do I ever like the sound and looks of these! Toasting the almonds & coconut is a great idea for really bringing out the delicious flavors! "Joyous," indeed! I think I'm going to go off and toast some almonds & coconut right now. :-)
PS: I just noticed on the Swerve website that a store not too far from me has started carrying it. Yay!
Hi CyberSis -- Hope you enjoy them. That is great to be able to buy Swerve locally! So far Whole Foods is the only store near me with it and that is not the most convenient of my grocery stores. I would love for Publix or Kroger to begin carrying it -- those are my most convenient local grocery stores. That's great -- it will save you on shipping -- always a good thing! "Double YAY!" :-)
Is the chocolate bar a Cacao bar?? or just chocolate bar??
Hi there -- yes it is a chocolate bar and the percentage (70 or 85) is the amount of cacao in the chocolate bar (some say 55, some 65, etc.). The higher the number, the darker the chocolate. :-)
Why Almond butter?
Cathy
Hi Cathy -- I'm not sure exactly what you are asking me -- why almond butter (as in "instead of peanut butter?") or why almond butter at all (as in "you don't like it?") or why are you asking me that?
These are the reasons I added the almond butter:
1) I like it;
2) to give a little creamier texture to the chocolate (but not so much that it kept it from hardening)...I didn't want to end up with chocolate almond butter;
3) I wanted to add a little richness to the chocolate.
You don't have to add it if you don't want to or don't like it. Hope one of those answers is to what you were asking me. :-)
Ooh these sound delish! I will definitely be making the Joyous Coconut Patties this weekend.
Thank you for another fabulous recipe GG!
Thanks, Peg -- I hope you enjoy them! :-)
Why not use unsweetened chocolate bars rather than 75% or 80% cocoa bars? That will help decrease the overall carb load as the 75% and 80% chocolate bars still have a fair amount of carbs in them (which is essentially sugar)
Hi Hannover -- You certainly could use 100% cacao chocolate bars -- I have used them before. I follow the WB plan and 70 and 85, etc. are allowed on that plan. The fact that it makes 10 treats out of 3.5 ounces of chocolate is actually pretty low carb and sugar (as compared to eating almost half of a chocolate bar that Dr. Davis allows as a treat). Below is the shakedown/breakdown of the sugar and carbs per treat from the chocolate used.
I use Green & Black's chocolate. If 70% is used to make the 10 treats, it is 2.5 grams of sugar per treat and 3.5 grams of net carbs from the chocolate.
If 85% is used to make the 10 treats, it is 2.0 grams of sugar per treat and 2.8 grams of net carbs from the chocolate.
If 100% unsweetened is used (Ghirardelli), there is 0 grams of sugar per treat and 1.8 grams of net carbs from the chocolate.
As you can see, yes, there is a difference, but not quite as much as you might think when you sit down and calculate it all out. If you are diabetic, then it might make a big difference...or if you decide to eat all 10 at once it would obviously make a difference, too.
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