Looking for a personalised gift for your Valentine? Making your own raw chocolate hearts is a great idea, and if you use our Rawr Goji Chocolate Chunks — which are super-discounted broken chocolate bars, ideal for using in recipes —  it’ll be a doddle!

And since the current price is just £1.73 for 100g of organic vegan chocolate, it’ll likely be cheaper than a shop-bought gift too.

(Even easier, you can enter to win a bag of chocolate hearts made by our chocolatiers; check out our giveaway on Instagram.)

You will need:

• Hearts chocolate mould (like these ones here)
• Rawr Goji Chocolate Chunks, however much you’d like to use
• A saucepan and bowl

1. Snap or cut goji chocolate chunks into small pieces.
2. Put the small pieces into a bowl.
3. Fill a saucepan with a couple of inches of water, and balance the chocolate-filled bowl on top.
4. Gently heat the pan — you want the chocolate to melt but not cook.
5. Stir the chocolate until it’s melted, then remove the bowl from the heat.
6. Using a spoon, fill the hearts mould with melted chocolate.
7. Put the mould in the fridge until the chocolate is set.
8. Lick the bowl clean while you while.
9. Remove set chocolate hearts from fridge and devour, or package nicely for your Valentine.

See, we said it was super simple! 🙂

If you give it a whirl, we’d love to see. Tag us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

We’re big fans of dairy-free ice cream. It’s so simple to make at home, and we’re getting through buckets of it now the summer’s in full swing!

We use a home ice cream machine (this one), which is super easy to use. A machine’s well worth the investment, but if you don’t have one you can also make ice cream by hand. Just pour the blended mixture into a tub and put it in the freezer, then give it a stir every half hour or so until it’s fully set. You won’t get as soft ice cream as you will if you use a machine, but it’ll still taste good!

Here are our favourite recipes. Feel free to tweak quantities and experiment with your own ingredient additions. As long as you keep the liquid to sweetener ratio about the same, it’s hard to go wrong.

Base

Blend:

780 ml coconut milk

320 ml coconut cream

1/2 cup coconut palm sugar or honey

Vanilla

Base + 1 tsp vanilla powder

Chocolate Chip

Base + 1/2 cup raw cacao powder + 1/2 tsp vanilla

After the ice cream comes out of the machine and is still soft (or, if making by hand, when it’s started to set in the freezer but isn’t fully solid), chop 2 Rawr Chocolate bars or a handful of goji chocolate chunks into small pieces and stir in. Then put in the freezer to set.

Chocolate Peanut Butter

Base + 1/2 cup cacao powder + 3 or 4 heaped tbsp nut butter

For toppings, we love our raw chocolate goji chunks, fresh fruit, cacao nibs, or a dollop of raw nut butter.

Happy ice cream making!

We love recipes made with our chocolate, and recently we’ve been blessed with lots from food and health bloggers! Many are raw and vegan, and easy to make at home on a rainy day.

All you need to get started is some chocolate (our goji chocolate chunks are a discounted way to buy raw chocolate to melt at home, find them here), and a quick trip to the kitchen cupboard or the shops.

If you come up with any recipes of your own using our chocolate, let us know as we’d love to share!

Plant-based Chocolate Flapjack Recipe — Curiously Conscious

How delicious does this look? Made with 160g chocolate, oats, fruit, and dates, find the recipe on Curiously Conscious here.

Rawr Goji Bites — The Food Teacher

A yummy take on raw fruit and nut balls, these are made with 100g chocolate, dates, nuts, and coconut oil. Find the recipe on The Food Teacher’s site here.

Frozen Banana Cupcakes — Grains and Gains

Here’s a recipe that’s perfect for summer. Frozen cupcakes using just three ingredients: 180g chocolate, banana, and almonds. Check out the recipe on Grains and Gains here.

Healthy Orange Hot Chocolate — Healthy Living London

And one for cooler nights! Healthy Living London used orange chocolate, but any flavour would work. (Mint hot chocolate? Now that sounds a treat.) Using 15g chocolate, cacao powder, milk or alternative, cinnamon, and coconut oil. Find the recipe here.

Baked Oatmeal — Moni’s Meals

We’ve been feeling the love for Instagram lately, and Moni’s Meals is one account we love. Moni used our chocolate as a topping for this scrumptious oatmeal (recipe here). If you haven’t tried chocolate and porridge before, they’re perfect partners.

Raw Goji Brownie Bars — Rawberry Fields

Rawberry Fields is one of favourite raw blogs. Rachel puts such care into every one of her posts, and her photos are beautiful. One of her particular skills is painting the inside of glass smoothie jars with raw chocolate — you have to see it to believe it! Check out one of my favourites here.

Rachel reviewed Rawr Chocolate here, and created a truly scrumptious brownie recipe, which you can find here.

Before Christmas I invested in a bunch of new books for my growing raw library – so many that I haven’t had time to go through them all yet! It’s already clear which are going to be my staples: usually those with non-specialist ingredients, beautiful layouts and the tastiest recipes. Here are my top 5 so far:

2. THE RAW GREEK – Gina Panayi

One of the less mainstream raw books, not as glossy and photo-filled as some, yet contains amazing, straightforward recipes.

Recommended Recipes: Koftedes (‘meat’ balls that taste genuinely meaty. A great variation on raw falafel recipes), Houmus, Spinach Pie (delicious and creamy).

3. THE JUICE MASTER’S ULTIMATE FAST FOOD – Jason Vale

Jason Vale is the master of the raw juice world. Occasionally we’ll replace a meal with one of his vegetable juices, and we’ve used this book in the past for juice fasts/feasts. Has lots of nutritional information about fruit and veg, and includes juices to drink before bed or while ill.

Recommended Recipes: The Steven ‘Meal’burg (really filling juice/smoothie using carrots, apple, cucumber, avocado, cinnamon and more), The Schwarzenegger (massive juice for when you’re poorly, including pineapple, garlic, beetroot…).

4. RAW FOOD REAL WORLD – Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis

An absolutely beautiful, thick, lustrous volume. One to dig out for special occasions rather than everyday eating. Recipes usually take more time to prepare and occasionally more specialist ingredients, but the ones I’ve tried have been divine.

Recommended Recipes: Soft Corn Tortillas (absolutely delicious though took a LOT of preparation. Ranks alongside Ani’s Baja Cheese Burrito as an all-time favourite), Macaroons.

5. RAW, THE UNCOOK BOOK – Juliano

Like ‘Raw Food Real World’ this makes a great coffee-table book. Really enjoyable to flick through, and the beautiful pictures alone will make your mouth water!

Recommended Recipes: Robbin’s Ice Cream (really sweet, gorgeous ice-cream, only a blender and freezer required. Mango, cashew, dates, bananas, fresh orange juice…).