Mum's Healthy Treats

This recipe can be tweaked in many ways, I find if I stick to the core ingredients, cream coconut block, coconut oil and at least one nut butter and one dry ingredient like desiccated coconut or oats the rest can be mixed up and changed for whatever is more to your taste.

You can also tweak the quantities, I often double up to make a super big batch if I know I’m not going to have so much time the following week.

The reason our family love these treats is that they’re extremely satisfying and quite substantial, because they’re coated in a layer of quality dark cooking chocolate they really do feel like a big but very ‘healthy’ treat. I make each treat a ‘decent’ size to really make it count!

We always have a stock of these in a sealed container in our fridge - they do need to be kept cold as the coconut and nut butters will soften at room temperature!

Ingredients

1 solid 200g block of creamed coconut

1/2 cup of coconut oil

1-2 cups of peanut butter ( depending on taste)

1 cup of desiccated coconut

1 cup of rolled oats *

1/4 cup of ground flax seeds *

1/4 cup of ground chia seeds *

1/4 cup of tahini *

1/2 cup of sunflower seeds *

1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds *

1/4 almond butter *

1/4 cashew butter *

1/4 cup of cacao butter *

Sprinkle of salt

* = all of these ingredients can be changed to suit your taste, you can add dried fruit, different nuts and seeds and other grains like puffed rice, puffed oats etc..

Method

1. Place a heatproof bowl over a pan of gently boiling water, put the creamed coconut block and coconut oil into the bowl and melt.

2. Once coconut is melted add all nut butters, cocoa butter and tahini.

3. Once everything in the bowl is completely melted mix it all up together then add all the other dry ingredients.

4. Once everything is completely combined and melted transfer the mix into a silicone ice cube tray - I like to use generous size cubes to make each treat substantial and satisfying but smaller cubes work just as well.. at this point I like to grind a little salt over the top of all the treats for the salty sweet taste, up to you.. or alternatively you could put the mix in a tray then just top it with chocolate..

5. Put the tray into the freezer for around 45-60 mins

6. Melt your chocolate, I like to use dark chocolate ( Green and Blacks) and always ‘cooking’ chocolate as it melts well.

7. Once the chocolate is melted take the treats from the freezer and empty them out ready to dip, do this before you start to dip as the chocolate will start to become thicker and more tricky to use as time passes.

8. I use forks for the dipping, place a treat one at a time into the melted chocolate, using the forks tip the treat from one fork to the other to remove the excess chocolate then leave to set on a tray with grease proof paper or just a well greased tray.

9. As the treats have been in the freezer you’ll find the chocolate starts to set on them fairly quickly once dipped, this keeps them from melting whilst you coat all the other treats. Once finished put the tray into the fridge for around 30 mins to set the chocolate then transfer to a container.

10. Make sure you keep the treats in airtight container in the fridge, they’ll keep for weeks or possibly longer, I never know as ours have only ever lasted two weeks max before they’re all gone.

11. Enjoy 😋