Paleo Dessert - Dark Chocolate Almond Bites

I caved.

We've been really good about staying away from sweets, but my husband has a huge open space in his belly reserved especially for chocolate. He craves it!

He's been known to buy a dark chocolate bar or two on the sly (which is admittedly much better than the caramel milk chocolate bars he used to get!), so I got to thinking about how we could both enjoy a bit of a treat without mainlining the chocolate directly into our veins. Maybe by mixing it with nuts we could fool our brains into thinking we're eating a larger volume of chocolate while we're actually eating nutritious nuts? Brilliant!

I got to looking around and found an organic bar of dark chocolate in the baking aisle at the grocery store and improvised.

Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

• 100g dark chocolate*
• 1tbs organic grass fed butter
• 1 tbs raw honey
• 300g raw almonds (about 1 cup)**

Optional:

• Coconut flakes
• Pureed ginger
• 2 or 3 drops of peppermint oil
• 3 or 4 drops of pure vanilla

Melt about a teaspoon of butter in a cup and use your finger to rub a bit of it into the inside of your tiny paper cupcake cups. This helps the paper peel easily off the finished product.

Break the chocolate into small bits and melt together with the butter and honey over low heat in a double boiler, or be lazy like me and microwave it ten seconds at a time until smooth with no lumps.

Stir in the almonds to coat. You could probably add another half cup of almonds or so if you like them thinly coated.

With a small spoon, drop about four or five almonds into each paper cup. Pop them into the freezer for fifteen to 30 minutes to set the chocolate.

Once they've hardened you can pile them all into a plastic food storage container and keep them in the fridge. Or if you have no self control like me, you can keep them in the freezer so they take a long time to warm up enough to eat. Whatever slows you down.

*The bar I found was 76% cocao with very little sugar
**Best if soaked overnight and allowed to fully dry. You could put them in a warm oven for a few hours to speed up the drying process.

What else you can do:

• Sprinkle the top with coconut flakes, or even stir the coconut directly into the melted chocolate.
• Mix 1-2 tbs ginger puree (or more if you like it strong) into the chocolate. The ginger ones were my husband's absolute favorite! I got scolded for "stealing" one from him. I swear I heard him whisper "my precious" as he ate his that night.
• Use peppermint oil or vanilla to flavor the chocolate. Get creative!

Now we have a ready snack that satisfies our chocolate craving without completely blowing our carb quota. Somehow just knowing they're in the house keeps the hubs from sneakily buying it at the store so his random binges are more under control. Now I just need to talk him into eating one or two, instead of four.

And I need to talk him into sharing those ginger ones. Yum.