Rawtarian's Raw Brownies

Hi. I’m Laura-Jane from therawtarian.com and today we’re going to be making one of my absolute favorite raw food recipes, raw brownies, and they’re super easy to make because all you need is a food processor and a big dish and your ingredients and you’re all set. So I know that you want to know what are those ingredients.

We have 1 cup of walnuts or pecans. They’re both similar in terms of texture so they are swappable. We have 1 cup of dates. We have 5 tablespoons of raw cacao powder or cocoa powder. 4 tablespoons of unsweetened shredded coconut. 2 tablespoons of your favorite sweetener. Today, I’m using some local honey. 2 tablespoons. And then the ¼ teaspoon of sea salt.

So how this is going to work is that we’re going to process the nuts first. So we got the 1 cup of walnuts, and we’re going to process them until they become quite fine, small, and crumbly. Something like you’d want to pinch and crumble on top of ice cream or something like that.

Almost there.

Pretty good. So now, we are going to add our 1 cup of dates. You can use Medjool dates or you can use—if you don’t have those or your budget does not allow for fresh dates, you can also use what I call baking dates which are not necessarily raw but they’re in the baking aisle and they’re a lot less expensive if you’re trying to really experiment with this on a budget. So we’re just gonna add those and then get it to combine very nicely.

A little more.

Perfection. I might just pause as well to show you. Food processor, although I love them, sometimes they are my nemesis. I hope you can see this. We have a nice crumbly texture. We’ve got little chunks of dates and walnuts. Delicious. Now frequently, I hear people tell me they don’t really like dates so they’re not gonna like this recipe. This recipe tastes like chocolate brownies. It does not taste like dates. The dates are there to give stickiness and sweetness, but it doesn’t taste like dates. They don’t taste like dates I should say. So we’re adding our 5 tablespoons of cacao powder. We are adding the 4 tablespoons of coconut. We are getting a spoon or cuillère in French because I did take French immersion in elementary school until it no longer meshed well with my personality. We have ¼ teaspoon of sea salt. Sea salt has a very different than table salt so I definitely recommend sea salt for this one. So we’ve added everything else. We’re processing again and once we stop, we will have brownie mixture.

Yes, I almost forgot. We don’t want to overprocess this because it could quickly turn into sort of a sludgy, fudgy chocolate mess. So what you will want to do—you saw how long I processed that for so. It really wasn’t very long. And now again, I want to show you this because basically our brownie batter is done. I want to show you the crumbly texture of this and what we want to have happen is we want to be able to stick it together so that it sticks together, but we also—gonna show you again—we want some airiness so that, see how it’s like there’s little balls and they’re not all stuck together. It’s not like a pancake batter or big fudge. You really want that air because you don’t want to overprocess it. So our batter is done, and I think these taste fabulous on their own, but I also have a fabulous—how many times can I say fabulous? Raw recipe for a really nice fudge kind of topping icing, if you will, but we won’t talk about that yet. So you can see what we’ve done is spread out this crumbly mixture and then this is important, we want to smush it down into your pan because in order for it to stick together and be easy to slice, we really need to put some pressure on it and just smush it. Technical terms here at therawtarian.com. So what we’re really doing is pushing it down into your pan. You could do truffles. You could roll it into a ball if you want it instead. You could put it and it doesn’t have to be this shape of the pan. Really, it’s such a versatile recipe that anything, not anything, but you know what I’m saying. Any container that you have is going to be fine. One of my main mottos in terms of raw food is just make it work and make it simple. So really what you want to do is push that down real firmly and, really, that’s it. I’m going to pop this in the refrigerator. You certainly could eat it now. It’s ready. The only issue, and I don’t have a knife out here so easily, but is that right at the exact moment, it’s not going to cut as cleanly as if it’s been in the fridge. So I’ve made it. I’m going to pop it in the fridge for at least an hour just to firm up a titch and then I’m also going to leave it in the fridge all the time and then just enjoy nibbling from it.

So I’m Laura-Jane from therawtarian.com, where I share lots of simple, satisfying raw food recipes. I’d love for you to join me here. My main motto is not too many ingredients, not too many steps, let’s just have it taste amazing, and be easy to create. So thank you so much for joining me and I hope to hear from you soon.