Crunchy Chia-Coconut Chocolates (And 2 conditional benefit giveaways)

For an important giveaway, see the bottom of this post and forgo all this chocolate business. Or maybe just come back to it later, because you probably like chocolate.

When I was little, the absolute best part of Christmas and Valentine's Day was chocolate. (Okay, not the absolute best for Christmas, but still up there. I like chocolate; can you tell?)
Even better than just plain ol' chocolate were the chocolate samplers.
The problem with these samplers, though, was that every once in a while I'd bite into one that was very do not want (will anyone even get that reference?) for me. There'd be the sickly-sweet cherry chocolates, the weird raspberry-flavored ones, the caramels (I know, I know, caramel is awesome or whatever is supposedly so great about it) and of course the dreaded coconut.
I never really had a problem with the flavor of coconut. It was just that the texture was so strange and there was a bit too much coconut flavor in such a small bite. Eventually I decided I hated it and just kind of... swore off coconut. Told people I was allergic to it and all that. What, you don't do that?

But then, of course, nowadays I read food blogs - especially blogs geared towards healthy living - and coconut is everywhere. It is pretty hard to escape. I was hearing a lot about coconut butter and coconut oil, so finally I caved and bought some coconut flakes and a jar of oil at Whole Foods.
I blended up the coconut until it was butter, and went from there. And what do you know: it turns out I'm kind of in love with coconut. Which makes it a bit annoying, I would guess, for my coconut-hating family, since I'm now addicted to adding it to everything and am constantly dreaming up ways to use it.

But hey - more fish for Kunta.

Crunchy Chia-Coconut Chocolates

(Recipe kind of by Mo but mostly inspired by and adapted from the amazing Meghan Telpner)

Makes 9 chocolates.

26 g (1/3 cup) good-quality cocoa powder

7 g (1/2 tbsp) virgin coconut oil

3.5 tbsp coconut butter (I use homemade, which works great, but I'm betting store-bought would be even better)

63 g (3 tbsp) raw agave or liquid sweetener of choice, such as honey, maple syrup, date syrup or brown rice syrup

2 pinches sea salt

1 tsp stevia powder (optional, as it's actually not very necessary and make note that this is not pure extract - 1 tsp of pure extract will probably make this taste horrible)

1 tbsp chia seeds (You could also use poppy seeds for the same texture, but it will be less nutritious! Another option would be unsweetened coconut flakes for a more coconutty flavor. Or, really, anything you want.)

Prepare a sheet of wax or parchment paper, a mini-muffin tin or a candy mold.

In a double-boiler, melt together everything but the seeds, stirring with a spatula until it's a smooth liquid. Stir in the chia seeds, and then scoop by the tablespoon onto your wax/parchment paper or candy mold. If on paper, slide onto a plate or cookie sheet and place in either the fridge or the freezer (depending on how long you want to wait to have one ;) ) until hard. Keep in a sealed container in the fridge or freezer. They actually probably could sit at room-temperature (that is, if it's still cool in your area) but I prefer cold chocolate, anyway!

They look like weird cookies, but they're not. They would probably look less weird in molds. But hey, I was free-stylin' it. 

The verdict:

While you'd never confuse them with a good hunk of Scharffen Berger or whatever it is you kids eat these days, these are very good, very rich, very filling and do actually taste like chocolates. They actually kind of remind me of Nestle Crunch Bars! They're not intensely coconutty, but you do get a whiff of it and it's lovely (if you like coconut, that is... otherwise these might not be the best idea for you). As I mentioned before, I used homemade coconut butter, which is super easy to make: just blend coconut flakes (preferably unsweetened and unsulphured) in a food processor or high-powered blender until smooth, creamy, and liquid.  Easy, cheap, delicious, and it has so many applications!

Also, you can have it be more like Meghan's recipe and use only coconut oil, but a) I didn't want these to be terribly high in fat or have a greasy mouthfeel, b) coconut oil is much more expensive and I use it wisely and c) I just really, really like coconut butter and it behaves pretty much the same way coconut oil does in recipes like these. :)

Oof (An Apology, An Excuse, and A Plan)

Whoa.

Yeah, I know.

Whoaaaa.

I know!

I've been rather, erm, absent lately, as you may have noticed (if anyone still even pays attention to this :S). I'm very sorry, and I do feel pretty bad about it because I gave not much warning or update. Instead, I kind of just disappeared. =\

This is a result of a combination of things:

1) Technological troubles.

2) A rather large decline in my health

3) General lack of creativity.

4) The need to focus on school.

5) The stress that blogging had been putting on me for a good deal of the time I was doing it.

I've thought long and hard about this, and I thought about how stressed this here blog was making me before I kind of abandoned it and the blogosphere in general. I considered closing up shop, but I do love this place, the people I've met through writing about food and - this is the biggie, here - I love sharing recipes and ideas. It's also a good way for me to work on my writing.

So here's my plan:

1) Move to a different hosting site. I'm sorry, Blogger. You've been great, and all, but actually that's just me being nice 'cause you've kind of sucked. Hard. I actually do enjoy the format you're laid out in, but you constantly eat comments, lose my posts, screw up the HTML and just suck in general. So, I am working on making a new blog on a different site. It's actually up already, as I had to make it as soon as I thought of the name I wanted for it (Oh, yeah, I'm getting a new name, too. I actually put thought into this one. :P) It may take a while to debut, though, because I want to pretty it up before I tell you all where to go. ;)

2) Have a posting schedule: once a week, on Tuesdays (subject to change, of course). I think a big part of my problem with blogging was that when I was beginning, I thought I should have a format like so many food bloggers that I'd followed and been inspired by. So I started posting every day, and that quickly tired me out. The truth is, I'm someone who cooks and bakes a lot at once so that I don't have to do it every day, (and 'cause I frigging love leftovers). And after I stopped posting every day, I would still get anxious about the fact that I hadn't posted in two days. I never had a rigid schedule to keep to, and that's been sucking. Maybe for a normal person this wouldn't be such an issue but it's something I really need in order to function properly. :P So yes, every Tuesday morning. Tuesdays are actually my busiest day, but if I can work all week on a post non-hurriedly and then schedule it to be posted on Tuesdays, then I don't have to worry about it. But since there's so much time between posts, this will lead to what comes next...

3) Stop talking so much about myself and focus on the food. Basically, in the past I've been worried about keeping you guys in the loop with everything that goes on in my life, especially when I miss so much time between posts, and I don't really feel it's necessary or conducive to making this an interesting blog. Sure, I'll throw in an anecdote here and there, but I think cutting down on the "me" part of it will help the logorrhea that is evident in my posts sometimes. There will still be classic Mo-isms, of course, because I can't really help those brain farts of mine, but I'd love to focus more on the food than myself. Some bloggers can pull off focusing on both themselves and the food (after all, half the time they're talking about themselves and talking about their days, it's about food anyway!), but I don't think I can. I'd like to just focus on one post a week, and have it be about the food.

4) Be more involved in the community. The blogging community, that is. I don't want to spend all day on the computer reading blogs and posting comments, but I do want to do more of that than I have been! Part of disappearing from the blogosphere has been disappearing from your guys' blogs, too. While this past week I have been trying to catch up on my favorite food blogs (abstaining from commenting because I thought it might be weird, because I'm a bit stupid), for the past few months I was kind of out of touch with the blogging world (There are so many great recipes I missed!). I'd like to post once a week, and then the rest of the week spend time reading and commenting. I feel like this is a more efficient way to connect, read and learn. Again, maybe for a normal person this schedule isn't needed but it turns out schedules make for a happier, less-stressed Mo.

My overall goal for this is for it to be fun again and not seem like an obligation, a homework assignment or a project that I'll fail at if I don't get it done in time. Blogging should be fun, not stressful and I somehow lost sight of that. I felt an obligation and, while that's fine to have if there are no negative side effects, the stress of this imaginary obligation made me somewhat relieved that I had an excuse for not posting (broken computer) and with each added excuse it made me shrink further and further away from this community, from this blog, and, ultimately, from my feeling of obligation. I regret having left this place so silent for so long, but I have a good feeling that it will have been for the better. I'd like to start over, turn over a new leaf or what have you. My main focus will be to provide you with great, wholesome food. I won't post every recipe I ever make anymore, and just weed it out to include just the good stuff. My hope is that the result will make up for my abandonment. ;)

Now, a couple mentions that I owe that are painfully overdue:

1) Marina of Cook At Home nominated me quite some time ago as one of the best blogs of 2010. At the time  my computer troubles made it near impossible to give her the gratitude I felt, so here it is. Thank you so much, Marina. It's wonderful to know that my efforts, however well they turned out, are appreciated and although I sure do feel undeserving of it now, it's incentive to be the best I can at what I'm doing. :) And please do check out her website, it's very resourceful and informative!

2) Months and months and months ago, Ryan from POM Wonderful sent me a big box of their 100% pomegranate juice. My sister, of course, being the juice-loving crazy that she is, drank most of it before I yelled at her because I wanted to make something special with it. She then whined and whined about how long I was taking to make something with it, but the thing is - I was having so much trouble figuring something out! See, I've seen so many recipes calling for pomegranate juice and I really wanted to do something different and unique. I only just figured out what I want to do with it, and I plan on doing that soon. So a huge thank you to Ryan and POM Wonderful for the gift and the patience! I know it's not like I'm contractually obligated to post about it, but it's common courtesy, I feel, and one that, while definitely not overlooked, was a bit neglected.

So yeah, that's about it. I hope everyone has been well and I look forward to getting back in the blogging habit. I've missed you guys, and I'll resume regular posting in a week!

A couple shots from upcoming posts ('cause I'm a tease):