A good chocolate sauce can transform any dessert from ordinary to divine.
And eating raw food doesn’t mean you have to forgo the pleasures of a good chocolate sauce.
This recipe uses a simple – but decadent – combination of agave, cacao powder and cashew butter, with a hint of kvanilla to create a magnificent chocolate sauce.
The cashew butter is optional, but it adds such a rich nutty depth to this sauce that I’d never consider leaving it out.
Beside, it also means that you don’t have to use coconut oil, which so many raw chocolate sauce recipes do, and I find that coconut oil can sit very heavily sometimes.
I love this recipe because it’s another “just chuck everything in the blender” recipe, which means that it’s fast as well.
So the next time you sit down to dessert and realise that you’re all out of raw chocolate sauce, it won’t take you long to whip up another batch.
It’s OK, off you go. I’ll wait.
This is an incredibly versatile raw chocolate sauce that allows you to easily control the thickness by adjusting how much water you add.
Add a tiny amount (or none) and you can create a rich chocolate icing.
Add lots and you’ll create a perfectly runny sauce for drizzling over ice cream.
And as a bonus, you can “clean out” your blender with some almond milk, making an instant chocolate milk as a reward for all your effort.
So, what are you going to smear chocolate sauce all over first?
Raw Chocolate Sauce
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup agave nectar (70g )
- 1/4 cup cacao powder (25g)
- 1/4 cup cashew butter (50g)
- 1/8 tsp vanilla bean powder or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup water (60g)
Method
- Add all ingredients to blender or food processor and blend until smooth.
- For a thicker sauce, allow it to sit in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight.
Preparation
- Before: -
- During: 15m
- After: 5-6h for sauce to thicken (optional)
- Need: Blender
Nutrition Information
Tips
- I actually halved this recipe when I adapted it from Karen Knowler’s Chocolate Dipping Sauce recipe, because I didn’t want to make so much at once. This amount works well in a small blender jug, but if you’re doing it in a larger jug, or in your food processor, you may need to double the amounts to get it to blend properly.
- You can use almond butter instead of cashew butter, if that’s all you have on hand. In theory, this raw chocolate sauce recipe should work with any nut butter, including peanut butter, but I just haven’t tried it with anything other than cashew.
- The nut butter is optional. You can make a really nice chocolate sauce with just the agave and the cacao and vanilla, but it won’t thicken up as much (or taste as nice, in my opinion).
- Vanilla powder is just ground up dried vanilla beans. You can make your own vanilla powder by air drying vanilla beans for a month or two, and then grinding them finely in a spice or coffee grinder. Or you can save yourself the trouble and buy something like Loving Earth’s Vanilla Powder. You can also just use vanilla extract instead.
- For a thick sauce that you can use as icing or a ganache, add around 30ml (1/8 cup) water.
- For a runny sauce, use around 125ml (1/2 cup) water. Your sauce might seem really runny when you first make it, but let it sit in the refrigerator for a few hours and it will thicken up nicely.
- No matter how much water you add, this sauce will thicken up quite a bit after a few hours in the refrigerator. Make sure you take this into account when deciding how much water to add.
Take it further
- Try making your own, truly raw cashew butter by grinding raw cashews, like Loving Earth’s Really Raw Cashews, into homemade cashew butter. You can do this in a food processor, or you can use a homogeniser, like the Champion Juicer. I’ve yet to try this, but it’s on my ‘to do’ list.
Have an awesome day!
10 comments
Donna
Wow. Had leftover home canned pears for dessert tonight. No chocolate sauce to dress them up. Found your recipe. Quickly made cashew butter in my Blendtec blender followed by other ingredients. Scrumptious chocolate sauce is fantastic-Easy peasey. Dessert was very good Thank you a million! Will memorize this one.
Nikki
Hi Donna,
I’m so glad you loved it. It’s definitely a great one to have your arsenal, and it makes any dessert that much better!
lily
Here I am making this again for another one of my kiddies birthdays and thought it was about time I express my thanks! Birthday pancakes with chocolate sauce makes me look like T.H.E BEST Mama ever! ..dipping sauce for fruit kebabs ..cake topping… best healthy recipe I have come across. THANK YOU :) xxxxx
Nikki
Hi Lily,
Isn’t it great when you can treat your kids SO well, and still feel like you’re doing the right thing by them? SO awesome.
Hope you have a great birthday celebration, and thanks for letting me know :)
Michaela
Tried this last night. Perfection! :-)
Nikki
Excellent!
Em
THE best chocolate I think I’ve ever had! I poured it over a bowl of chopped up bananas. Yum! But the best part was licking the bowl when all the bananas were gone. ;-) And you are correct…it thickens up quite a bit! Thank you so much for this simple recipe.
Nikki
Hi Em,
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it. :D
Victoria
Wow, this looks incredible and nutritious! I’m going to make this just for what I would imagine is the best chocolate milk ever! (and also the sauce of course)
Nikki
Thank you. Yes, the chocolate milk is very good, and of course you can always stir a spoonful (or two, or three) of sauce into a glass of milk any time you feel the urge for more. It’s really nice to find recipes with extra benefits :)