Raw Chocolate Macaroons

These raw macaroons are really incredible. Some people call them coconut haystacks.

You can make these with carob (I prefer raw) or raw cacao powder. They taste incredible and the only trick is not eating too many of them. The dried coconut flakes have lots of fiber so they can be a little difficult to digest.

Also if you use grade b maple syrup instead of honey that can be harder to digest as well because it’s cooked and it’s a disaccharide (fructose and glucose, although it has lots of minerals). The digestive organs like the intestines, stomach and colon have a hard time breaking down disaccharides.

In any event they taste incredible and I think you’ll love them. Try to add some stevia in the recipe to replace as much of the sugar or maple syrup as you can.

Stevia is an herb (make sure you use green leaf stevia if you can) that mimmics the taste of sugar but has no glycemic affect on the body at all. I highly suggest you use as much stevia in the recipe as you can in place of honey, agave, or maple syrup.

I orginally got the recipe from the great raw food uncook book called, Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow. I loved this book. They have a great ice cream recipe in there as well that I really enjoy.

And if you’re looking for other great recipes just like this one you’ll want to checkout The World’s Sexiest Diet by Philip McCluskey. He’s got over 100 recipes in his program that are delicious and put together by great people.

Anyway here’s the Raw Chocolate Macaroon recipe:

Makes about 24 to 36 macaroons

• 3 cups dried unsweetened coconut flakes
• 1 1/5 cups raw cacao powder
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup coconut butter
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract (you can add mint extract also)
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

You’ll want to dehydrate at about 115 degrees for 8 to 12 hours. They should be crisp on the outside but warm and gooey on the inside. Just like those old toll house cookies mom used to make!

Here are some photos of the last batch I made. It takes about 10 minutes to whip up this many.

I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!