Raw chocolate icing

1. Place all ingredients in a high-speed blender. If possible, let them sit in there for a few minutes to soften the dates a little bit.

2. Blend all ingredients in your high-speed blender. The ingredients can be a little finicky to blend, so start at a slow speed and increase speed slowly.

3. Keep blending for a very long time to get a velvety consistency. This is one of those recipes that really makes use of the power of a high-speed blender. If you feel that the blades are just spinning but aren't actually moving all of the icing around, turn the blender off and make an air pocket down the side of the blender with a spatula to expose the blades. Remove the spatula, replace the lid, and start blending slowly again.

4. You'll know it's ready if there are no bits of dates and all you can taste is velvety chocolate goodness.

5. This raw chocolate icing is ready to use as soon as you pour it out of the blender.

It's a great raw vegan icing for cakes, brownies and the like! Iced cakes or brownies should be kept in the refrigerator.

Raw chocolate icing... I am having difficulty understanding how the combination of four basic ingredients could taste so divine.

I mean, this raw chocolate icing only contains dates, cacao, coconut oil and water. Sounds boring, right? It must just taste like pasty dates, right?

Wrong! This tastes like raw chocolate icing that you'd get at some high-brow raw vegan restaurant. It has a smooth, chocolatey, velvety texture and sweet, chocolatey mousse-like taste. Plus, it's really easy to work with and spread.

I was inspired to whip up a batch of raw chocolate icing to go on top of my raw brownies. Yeah, the combination of those raw brownies and this icing is pretty much heavenly. This raw chocolate icing has a very handy consistency--it's a lot like mousse when kept in the fridge.

This raw chocolate icing could also double as a raw pudding if you were feeling sad and needed to eat some chocolate out of a bowl with a spoon to make yourself feel better. :)