Tag Archives: Almond Joy

Healthy-ish Salted Almond Joy Bars

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all dipped 2While these home-made almond joy bars aren’t exactly healthy, they are healthy-ish. It’s all a matter of degree. Consider the ingredients in a store bought Almond Joy:

Corn Syrup, Milk Chocolate (Milk Chocolate, Contains Sugar, Coca Butter, Chocolate, Milk, Lactose, Milk Fat, Nonfat Milk, Soy Lecithin, An Emulsifier), Coconut, Sugar, Almonds, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oils, Whey, Cocoa, Salt, Vanilla, Chocolate, Egg Whites, Soya Lecithin, and Sodium Metabisulfite, to Preserve Color.ingredientsThese simply contain unsweetened almond butter, unsweetened coconut, honey, coconut oil, vanilla bean paste and salt. They are finished with a thick coating of bittersweet chocolate and topped with whole toasted almonds and sea salt. This recipe is from the genius mind of Anna Jones. I am loving her new book, A Modern Way to Cook. mix in a bowlspreading in panChill the mixture for about 45 minutes in the freezer before cutting into bars. Get your dipping station all set up. I was excited to use my chocolate dipping fork. I bought it over 30 years ago and it still thrills me every chance I get to use it. it makes me feel like a professional chocolatier. A regular fork works just as well for dipping. ready for dipping

 

all dippedThese satisfy your sugar craving without being cloyingly sweet. The hard shell of bittersweet chocolate yields to a chewy almond coconut filling.

Click here to print recipe for Healthy-ish Salted Almond Joy Bars.

on a bed of coconut

Almond Joysicles…If this is vegan, sign me up!

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hands 1 I intended to blog about peach raspberry sorbet this week but somehow, here I am telling you all about Almond Joysicles. It all started with a little culinary challenge. We were having 12 friends up to the cottage for the weekend and I was in charge of Friday night dinner and dessert. (Everyone is assigned a different meal). Most of these friends keep strictly kosher and since I was making Miami Ribs, dessert had to be dairy free.

I must confess that I am always thrown off balance when challenged to bake dairy free desserts.  I don’t like to use butter or milk substitutes so I took the fresh fruit sorbet route. I settled on a tangy lemon sorbet and a peach-raspberry combo. While surfing for inspiration, I came across an article on seriouseats.com titled, “How to make Great Vegan Ice Cream”. Vegan Ice cream?? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Ordinarily, my visceral reaction to the word vegan causes me to recoil.

But, as I read through the article and recipe, I discovered that it did not contain any ersatz dairy products, but utilized instead, the dynamic duo of coconut milk and coconut cream.  With this double coconut whammy, this ice cream would be high in fat, which means lots of flavour.

I whipped up a batch of this along with the peach raspberry and the lemon. Most requested flavour and winner by a long shot was the coconut sorbet.  If this is vegan, sign me up!in cone 2I was telling my daughter about these and she suggested I freeze them in Popsicle molds. As I whipped up second batch, I upped the fun factor, and mixed in some chopped salted almonds, toasted coconut and bittersweet chocolate chunks. Outstanding! Then, my girlfriend Marla, who is one of the most intelligent people I know, suggested, dipping them in melted bittersweet chocolate. I know… brilliant, right?3 blue 625b sq

Click here to print recipe for Almond Joysicles.