Raw Vegan Chocolate Bars

A vegan or plant-based nutritional approach to eating doesn't mean that desserts, treats, cakes, and other beloved guilty pleasures have to be off-limits. Vegan cooking has come a long way in creating varied and delicious sweets that have nothing to envy in conventional dairy and egg-based confections. Our simple recipe for raw vegan chocolate bars is just one example of the great desserts you can make with just a few healthy ingredients. They're prepared in just five minutes, but let your cacao bars to set in the fridge before eating—although licking the spoon is definitely allowed.

Raw cacao is the cold-pressed, unroasted cacao bean, and because there are no high temperatures hitting it, its nutritional content is higher than in its cousin cocoa. Considered a superfood, raw cacao has been stealing the spotlight from more conventional cocoa. It's high in many minerals, including zinc, potassium, manganese, and especially magnesium. The benefits of consuming cacao have been studied alongside those of drinking coffee and tea, as they all share the presence of a phytochemical called methylxanthine, which promotes brain and cognitive health.

This method for making homemade raw chocolate comes from Emily von Euw's book of similarly delicious raw food recipes "Rawsome Vegan Baking." Use our method as inspiration and personalize your cacao bars with crunchy or fruity toppings to make the combinations that you like the most. We recommend using cocoa butter—another name for cacao butter—instead of coconut oil because it helps the bars set better and it won't melt in your hands as easily as a bar made with coconut oil.