Easy Vegan Chocolate Truffles

Hello lovely readers!

As the three of us are busy with friends, family and travels this week, we knew instantly we wanted to have a guest post by one of our favorite bloggers!

We found Julia over at The Roasted Root several months ago. Her approach to wholesome, healthy meals and love of vegetables is so inspiring. Her beautiful photography, witty writing and mouthwatering recipes are just addicting! She uses a variety of healthy ingredients for an eclectic collection of recipes. Luckily, she happily accepted to share her creative work with you all today!  :)

Well hoooowdy ho! I’m Julia, the lady behind The Roasted Root and I’m thrilled to be guest posting on Natural Sweet Recipes! I connected with Holly, Annie and Chelsea not long after I began blogging and was immediately drawn to their site. The girls are experts on a topic I’m veeeeeeery interested in: sweet stuff minus cane sugar.

Keeping with the theme of natural sweetness, I whipped up the easiest batch of raw and vegan truffles and am shocked at how well they turned out given the minimal effort they required. These truffles are literally made with three ingredients. The truffles are delicious as is but the recipe can also be used as a base to add additional ingredients. You can add dried cherries, orange rind, vanilla bean, various nuts, shredded coconut, coffee grinds, liqueurs, etc. according to how you like your truffles.

These should be called eat-as-you go truffles. Because by the time you scrape the mixture out of the blender (munch), form it into balls (munch), roll the balls into cacao powder (munch), take photographs (sluuuuuurp), you’re left with mere crumbs.

Not all dates are created equal, so the type of dates you’ll need for this recipe are pitted, moist and sticky to the touch. You can pick these up at the grocery store in the dried fruit section. Also paramount for making this recipe truly “raw” is using raw cacao powder. You can definitely use cocoa powder but that would make the recipe not raw since cocoa powder is made from cocoa beans that have been roasted and sometimes processed with ingredients that cut the bean’s acidity. Nevertheless, if you use cocoa powder, the truffles will still come out fabulously!

Hope you enjoy these eat-as-you-go truffles and thanks for having me, folks!

Ingredients:

30 dates (about 8 ounces), pitted and unsweetened

5 tablespoons raw cacao powder (+ more for rolling the truffles)

2 tablespoons walnut or coconut oil

Instructions:

Add the dates and cacao powder to a high-powered blender or food processor. Pulse/blend a few times to chop up the dates.

Add in the oil and process/blend until everything is combined and you get a thick, sticky mixture.

Using a spatula, scrape all of the mixture out of the food processor/blender and into a bowl.

Refrigerate for 15 minutes. This allows the mixture to set up a bit so that it’s easier to work with.

Roll the mixture into 14 balls. Roll each ball in additional cacao powder, unsweetened shredded coconut, or nuts.

Resist the temptation to eat the entire batch in one sitting.