A couple summery recipes

It's been hot hot hot here, which means light food, salads and icy frozen desserts. Here are two recipes I've been loving; one from Whole Living that is endlessly adaptable, and one I improvised in an urgent need for popsicles.


Here's the recipe from Whole Living. I've still not made it with apricots; I've used what dried fruit I've had on hand and some a friend gave me. Pictured above, I used dried pitted dates. Those were a little harder and wouldn't chop up finely enough, so I microwaved them for a few seconds with a drop of water in the bottom of the bowl, and it worked like a charm. I also double the chocolate, using one ounce instead of a half. You can change up the nuts, leave out the coconut, or even leave off the chocolate. I've made date-cherry-coconut-almond-chocolate, fig-almond-chocolate and plum-almond-coconut-chocolate. Next I want to try using cashews, and try to adapt this recipe to taste like Cliff Bar's Dark Chocolate Brownie. 



I needed wanted popsicles the other day and decided to improvise a Mexican Mocha flavor. Mexican chocolate is spiced grainy chocolate. You can buy it in most grocery stores (at least out here in California), and there are several brands but my favorite is Ibarra. It comes in bricks of little wedges and is usually used for making hot chocolate but I love to put it in coffee. You could adapt this to use regular chocolate or even leave it out and up the cocoa. You could make it lighter by using milk or non-dairy milk, or make it richer by using straight up cream. Enjoy!



Mexican Mocha Popsicles

3 cups hot coffee
5 wedges Mexican chocolate (or about 1/4 c. chocolate chips)
2 heaping T. cocoa
1 T. sugar (more to taste if needed)
1 c. half-and-half

Whisk the chocolate into the hot coffee. Add the rest of the ingredients once the chocolate is melted and whisk until well mixed. Pour into popsicle molds and freeze.

This made 11 small round popsicles for me, and each one is only 60 calories! 

This entry was posted on 8.02.2012 and is filed under ,. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.