Did you make it to our inaugural BGO Christmas party on the weekend? We had such a blast! Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people in our house at once (ok, I definitely haven’t).
Tony and I are closet introverts at heart (as well as somewhat OCD on the cleanliness side of things), so having 50 people traipsing around our house on a rainy day was certainly new for us!
It was so great to see so many of you in person though. We listened to Bublé and Mariah on repeat, drank essential oil-infused strawberry and coconut water kefir, snacked on platters full of plant-based goodness, and everyone got an essential oil or homemade facial toning mist to take home. It definitely felt like a pretty sweet Christmas to me!
I can’t have all the fun without you though, so let’s just keep these gorgeous Creamy Milk Chocolate bars between you and I shall we?
That’s right – you, me, dairy milk chocolate. Sans the dairy of course. Could you wish for anything more this Christmas? I couldn’t! Let’s go…
Milk Choccie with
- Health – dairy wreaks havoc with conditions such as asthma, hay fever, eczema, and psoriasis, and can also exacerbate auto-immune diseases and cancers);
- Animal welfare concerns – cows in NZ luckily are ‘free range’, but in many countries they no longer are; and furthermore, all male baby calves are killed in every country as they’re not required for milk production) or
- Environmental issues – the dairy industry is one of the largest contributors to global warming, and the effluent has caused over 60% of our waterways in NZ to be unsafe to swim in.
The problem is, in chocolate, it just tastes so good! There’s nothing quite like the creaminess of a good old slab of dairy milk.
I’ve managed to replace dairy in virtually every other sphere of life, but a good classic creamy milk chocolate was still eluding me.
That is, until I found Mad Millie’s Raw Cacao Chocolate Kit the other week! Inside are all the ingredients you need to make your very own chocolate slabs. All you then need to add is a packet of this coconut milk powder (you can pre-order it here), and sweet creamy dairy choc can also be yours.
Raw chocolate differs significantly from general mass-market chocolate you can buy from the supermarket. It uses raw cacao (not cocoa), which hasn’t been heat treated, and is therefore a fabulous source of antioxidants (40 times that of blueberries). When cacao is processed into cocoa, most of these antioxidant benefits are lost. Not only that, conventional chocolate contains refined sugars, emulsifiers, and often a host of other not-so-whole-food ingredients, particularly if you’re buying the flavoured varieties (and I know you have…).
Raw chocolate also actually boasts an incredible nutrient profile – providing magnesium, iron, and also acting as a positive mood enhancer. I love raw chocolate so much, that I’ve spoken about the benefits of raw cacao many times before, including here!
Inside Mad Millie’s kit there’s also a mould so you can mould your chocolate into professional looking bars, as if they were from the store. Of course because there were four slots, I couldn’t resist but to make four different flavours.
So inside here we’ve got…
- Wild Orange and Cacao Nib
- Christmas Spiced Goji Berry
- Peanut Slab
- Coconut Rough
Mad Millie have even included cute little wrappers and stickers inside the kit, so you wrap these up and give to your fellow choc-loving friends and fam as gifts! Then make a second set for
Once you’ve finished using all the ingredients inside the kit, you can then go and buy your own to top up, and keep using the moulds for endless bars of chocolate. I’m thinking Snickers bars and Bounty’s could be next!
Oh
Give these flavours a go this Christmas, and let me know which is your fav! Or perhaps you’ve got other ideas up your sleeve…? I’d love to hear.
Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of your week, and relish the last relaxing days of November before the mad Christmas rush…!
Talk soon,
Please note – if you are wanting to meet any of the specific dietary requirements below, please read my recipe notes.
Ingredients
Milk Chocolate
- 1/2 c coconut sugar
- 1/4 c boiling water
- 1/3 c cacao butter
- 3 tbsp cacao powder
- 3/4 c coconut milk powder
Flavours & Toppings
Peanut Slab
- 1 tbsp peanuts
Coconut Rough
- 1 tbsp desiccated coconut
Christmas Spiced Goji Berry
- 1 drop cinnamon essential oil
- 1 drop clove essential oil
- 1 tbsp goji berries
Wild Orange & Cacao Nib
- 1 tbsp cacao nibs
- 1 drop wild orange essential oil
Instructions
- Combine the coconut sugar in a bowl with the boiling water to create a coconut sugar syrup.
- Melt cacao butter in a saucepan. Meanwhile, combine cacao powder and coconut milk powder in another bowl. Add 5 tablespoons of the coconut syrup and dry ingredients to the cacao butter. Stir gently.
- Remove chocolate from heat and divide into four separate ramekins (skip this if only making one flavour). Add your desired flavours to each. Pour into the chocolate bar mould and sprinkle with toppings.
- Place in the fridge to set for at least 2 hours. Either wrap and gift or enjoy straight from the fridge!