While I was thinking about what next to make in my dehydrator, I remembered I had a copy of Ani’s Raw Food Desserts and remembered that the reason I’ve never taken much notice of raw food ‘cook’books in the past was because a lot of the recipes needed a dehydrator. So I grabbed my copy off the shelf and flicked through and a couple of recipes immediately looked appealing.
Like this recipe for strawberry and coconut macaroons, for example. Ani’s recipe in the book says to dehydrate them for 3-6 hours but my macaroons were still too moist in the middle for my liking after that amount of time and also had a strange bitter taste, so I lowered the temperature and left the dehydrator running all night. In the morning, they were perfect.
I’m assuming my mix was so wet and took so long to dry because, when Ani stated in her recipe 1 cup of strawberries, I had no idea whether that meant whole strawberries (therefore leaving a lot of gaps/air), or to cut the strawberries up so they fit into a cup. I went for the latter method and ended up with a mix that was practically liquid. Still, even if I did go about things the wrong way, the end result was perfect, so that’s the recipe/method I’m going to post here.
I kept thinking these macaroons should be pink but then the logical part of my brain told me that this is natural food and the pink confection you see in the shops is pink because they’ve got food colouring added to them. If you like those biscuity kind of coconut macaroons you find in the shop, you’ll love these. And unlike those ones you find in the shop, these are healthy.
- 1 cup sliced strawberries
- ⅓ cup pitted dates
- ⅓ cup agave nectar
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups desiccated coconut
- Put the strawberries, dates, agave nectar and vanilla extract into a food processor and blitz until thoroughly mixed. It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth.
- Add the desiccated coconut and pulse until mixed in.
- Shape into 10 balls and place on a dehydrator tray.
- Dry for 12 hours on 40C.