The Raw Food Diet And Chocolate

The raw food diet prohibits all cooking but allows heating at temperatures lower than about 115 degrees Fahrenheit. According internationally acclaimed raw food author and speaker Victoria Boutenko, this is the temperature at which enzymes, vitamins and other essential nutrients begin to break down. To maximize the nutritional value of the food you eat, Boutenko and other raw food experts recommend staying away from foods cooked at higher temperatures. For many people, the worst thing about the raw diet is that it prohibits sugar-sweetened foods. Because ordinary cane sugar is made by heating sugar cane juice, it is not a raw food. Excluding cane sugar rules out eating or drinking delicious and healthy treats, such as 75 percent dark chocolate and hot soy milk cocoa. But you can make your own raw variations of these.

Raw Food Preparation

If you follow a raw food diet, you cannot cook your foods. But, as Boutenko notes, you can prepare them. Using a blender, you can turn minced fruits, powdered or soaked nuts and raw spices into cake, smoothies, sweet dessert fillings and sweet milks. With a dehydrator that blow-dries food at low temperatures, you can make "baked" cakes, waffles, pie crust and crackers. You can also warm your food, as long as you use temperatures lower than 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Most raw dieters also allow foods and drinks that are heated in glass containers in the sun.

How to Make Chocolate Treats

The fact that you need to stay away from ordinary chocolate if you follow a raw diet is no excuse for not going raw. As leading British raw chef James Russell, best-selling raw food author David Wolfe and other raw food experts have demonstrated, some of the tastiest chocolate treats are raw. To make delicious raw chocolate truffles a la James Russell, process 2 cups cashews in a blender. Add 2 cups of cacao or carob powder, 1 cup of grated raw cacao butter, 2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice and 1 tbsp. of grated orange peel and process again. The consistency should be thick. Spoon out on parchment paper. Chill for half an hour. Then cover the truffles with raw icing. Make sure that all of the ingredients you use are raw.

Dried Cane Juice as a Sweetener

Non-raw dieters can use regular table sugar, also known as cane sugar as a sweetener in desserts and to make frosting. However, as cane sugar is not a raw food, raw dieters must use a different sweetener. Pure dehydrated sugar cane, sold as sucanat, is made by dehydrating the starting ingredient for regular table sugar at low temperatures. The result in a grainy brown sugar product. Sucanat has a slightly different taste than cane sugar, as it contains molasses from the starting product. The molasses contain healthy nutrients that are filtered out in cane sugar, including essential minerals such as iron and magnesium.

According to a study in the September 1995 issue of "Journal of the American Dietetic Association," if you have blood sugar problems, there is a further benefit to using sucanat compared to cane sugar. Because of the higher contents of molasses in sucanat compared to cane sugar, it does not cause such steep fluctuations in the blood levels of glucose as cane sugar does.

Frosting Chocolate Desserts

Most raw food sites contain recipes for raw icing for cakes and chocolates. To make "easy" raw icing, make or purchase raw sucanat. Pour a cup of it into a powerful food processor, and process until it turns to a fine powder. Add a small quantity of water and a touch of lime to the powder. Stir. For a richer chocolate-flavored frosting, blend 1 cup cashews, 1 tbsp. of agave nectar, 1/4 cup cold-pressed coconut oil, 1/2 cup of water and 5 tbsp. of low-temperature melted cacao butter. Cover your cake or roll your truffles in the mix and let the treat dry in the refrigerator.

"Hot" Chocolate

Soy milk has a high nutritional value, but it is not raw. You can get your soy from sprouted soy beans, which you make by placing soy beans in water in a ventilated jar for one to five days. Chocolate milk made of sprouted soy beans is not very tasty, however. Chocolate almond milk, on the other hand, is delicious. Rachel Karr, a raw food chef at Cru Restaurant in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California recommends the following recipe. Process almonds soaked overnight, water, natural honey or some other raw sweetener in a blender and, if desired, strain through a piece of cloth. To make chocolate milk, add a couple of tablespoons of cacao or carob powder and blend again. For warm chocolate milk, pour the chocolate milk into a glass jar with a tight lid, and place it in the sun for an hour or two, or save time and heat the chocolate milk to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Add whipped raw cream on top.