The finished product. Holy Batman, yum!

Here’s my conundrum: I am a card carrying member of the chocolate fan club but I sure as heck want to avoid the nasty side-affects I get from eating heavily processed, nutrient-deficient versions of chocolate. What to do?

The answer came to me a few months ago when I stumbled across This Rawsome Vegan Life, a blog, run by the beautiful Em, which is dedicated to the amazing world of raw vegan desserts. The first time I visited the blog, I lost hours clicking through (read: drooling over) Em’s creations. My mind was spinning with ideas!

Since then, I have attempted a few raw vegan treats with varying levels of success but yesterday I hit the jackpot. The chocolate jackpot. This Raw Paleo Snickers Bar was super easy to make and tasted phenomenal.

The only equipment needed is a food processor to whizz together all of the ingredients.

The ingredients (minus the Medjool dates, which are sitting just outside of the shot).

The recipe says you can use macadamias for the caramel layer but I chose cashews because I had some available. Macadamias would make the caramel really creamy though so I think I’ll use them next time.

Preparing the caramel and base layers (the caramel is on the left).

Once the three main elements (the caramel and base layers, and the chocolate) were finished, I began assembling it all.

Tip: use a hot knife to cut through the slice.

I had to stop midway through to conduct some quality control tests.

Laura: Quality Control Officer.

I think I could have made the portions a bit smaller to make the finished product last longer… Ha! Who am I kidding? It still would have disappeared just as quickly. I would have made up for the smaller sizes by eating twice as many portions. I’m only human after all.

Coated in chocolate and ready to go in the freezer.

Once the chocolate layer was on, I popped the bars in the freezer for an hour (#longesthourofmylife) and then they were ready to be eaten. And eat them I did. My gosh.

I’m still coming down from a raw Snickers-induced high.

The best bit? There is one more left for my morning tea tomorrow. Monday just got a whole lot more bearable.

Laura