A Dessert That's Almost Good For You!

Recently, a good friend of mine asked me to try out a recipe.  She follows a relatively strict diet, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't be able to treat herself occasionally, right?  I'm here to tell you that this pie is FABULOUS and has very little refined sugar (only the amount that is in the dark chocolate).  My kids even liked it.  Well, my oldest, liked it all. My younger, pickier eater only liked the crust and didn't care for the coconut flavor of the filling.  But if you like chocolate and coconut together, this is the dessert for you! Confession: I had a piece for breakfast and only felt mildly guilty about it.

The original recipe comes from Nom Nom Paleo and is called Kelly Brozyna's Chocolate Pie and Raw Graham Cracker Crust. Since I'm linking to the recipe, I won't reprint it here, but will walk you through some of the key steps.

The recipe calls for coconut cream, but not the canned coconut cream that has tons of added sugar.  Just take two cans of unsweetened coconut milk (NOT the "lite" kind), put them in the fridge for an hour, then open them up and scrape off the layer of hardened cream (don't shake the cans -- you want to be sure the cream stays separate).  What do you do with the leftover coconut milk?  You can make Carrot Coconut Soup, like I did, or use it in a smoothie.

The other thing that I had to change is the type of nuts used, because I didn't have enough walnuts.  So I used almonds instead.  I don't know if almonds have less oil in them than walnuts, but my crust wasn't very sticky, so I added another date.

I should have added two extra dates, because it still wasn't very sticky (or at least just sticky enough to stay formed in the pie plate), but I forged ahead.  

I tried using my measuring cup trick to spread the crumbs evenly, but the dates just kept sticking to the bottom of the cup, so I ended up just using my hands, anyway.  Ironically, the crumbs weren't sticky enough to stick to each other. I had a tough time with that part...

The filling couldn't have been easier.  Just dump the stuff in all together and blend.  Unfortunately, using the food processor (as suggested in the recipe) left little date chunks:

I wanted to try and get it as smooth as it showed in the original recipe, so I dumped it all in the blender. Success!  The blender got the filling a lot smoother.  I suggest using that, if you make this recipe.

Then, just put in the fridge to set and you have a simple, delicious, healthy-ish, yet decadent dessert that even non-Paleo folks will appreciate!