Functional Sweet Treats
These are packed with good stuff! They taste pretty amazing too, if I don’t say so myself. Tomorrow I am helping to give a demonstration to nutrition students, it is on how to use medicinal mushrooms ( I did this morning, it went well 🙂 ). I am bringing along sweet goodies made with reishi mushroom powder. Reishi has been used for thousands of years. It is one of if not the first medicinal food to be written about, in China roughly 2,000 years ago!Paul Stamets is a good name to look up if you want know more about these natural powerhouses, his Ted talks are a good intro.
Savoury is generally they way we go when it comes to mushrooms but why not with cacao? Or blueberries? Think of the antioxidant levels! Picture the immune boosting! Discover their adaptogenic properties!! Imagine the tastiness!
Here we go Functional Sweet Treats
- Two dessertspoons of goji berries. Soaked over night in just enough water to cover them. I used water kefir.*
- Half a ripe avocado- should a bit of give to it when pressed and be going a dark sap green colour.
- Two big dessertspoons of blueberries
- A flat dessertspoon of organic coconut oil
- Two generous dessertspoons of raw dark agave/ date syrup / maple syrup. Whichever you prefer.
- A generous cup plus two dessertspoons of ground almonds
- Two generous teaspoons of raw cacao powder
- A sachet of reishi powder which includes mint, licorice, star anise and stevia. Great for those adrenals. *
- Optional: Half a teaspoon of pre-gelatised maca powder
- A half teaspoon of vanilla powder or the scraped inside of one vanilla bean.
- A quarter of a teaspoon of good quality sea salt or himalayian pink salt.
- A third of a cup of organic desiccated/shredded coconut. For sprinkling on top or rolling in.
*This is about double the goji needed. I do more incase some stay a bit hard and eat the left overs. Yum.
*If you are using reishi capsules make sure there are not tons bulking agents, these could change the flavour. One capsules may do, go by taste.
Grab your soaked goji berries. It really is up to you what you would prefer. I don’t want goji lumps on my cacao reishi fantasticalness so I cut or shred my softened gogis. If you like big hits of the gogi then just chop them in two. Put them to one side for use as a topping later.
Mash your avocado and coconut oil together. Add your one dessertspoon of the blueberries and mash again. Should be a creamy paste.
Add the liquid sweetener and Mash MASH mash… again. Add the other spoon of blueberries and mix through. I press this less, as I like having more whole pieces of blueberries too.
Colourful even in the orange light of my kitchen-diner.
In another bowl combine all the dry ingredients (except for the coconut, that is for on top). Make sure there are no lumps of ground almonds or cacao. Sprinkle the salt in so it is evenly dispersed.
Dry goodies
Add the dry things to the omega rich, mct containing, antioxidant abundant….stuff. Mix, stir, combine and merge the ingredients. Pressing the mixture to make sure the fats are taken up well.
Here is the one I used
My preferred Option A: You can roll them into teaspoon size balls. Prepare a plate with your gojis and one with coconut. Roll the balls in goji and then roll them in the coconut. Pop them on a dish and stick them in the fridge to set. They need to live in the fridge (and die in your tummy) as they will go squidgy when left unchilled.
Option B: Get a 7.5 inch cake tin/ tart dish and spread the mix a one centimetre deep. Ah the mixed measurements! That is 20cm cake tin and a quarter inch thick! 😉 You can the sprinkle and press the goji and coconut on top. Pop in the fridge for fifteen minutes. Take out and cut into one inch (2.5cm) squares. Put in the freezer to set. It is happier in there all the time really. It gets shy and melty at room temperature.
Hope you like these!Xs Aissa
P.S. There is a wealth of info on line but here are a few of links about reishi!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-stamets/reishi-mushrooms_b_2200808.html
http://www.alive.com/articles/view/17705/reishi_mushroom
And for a bit more of the nitty gritty science bit http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92757/
VeganEtcetera 