So, I decided to get a monthly gluten free snack subscription from tastypantry.com to keep my creative juices flowing in the kitchen! Every month a carefully curated collection of goodies miraculously appears at my door. Everything has been very tasty, but nothing has inspired me as much as one particular product…..Cacao Brittle. It looked completely uninteresting to me. So much so, that I didn’t even try it for a week. One bite, and I realized that I was hooked! Crunchy, barely sweet, chocolate goodness. Just a hint of banana….which is a good thing, since I don’t like bananas:)
But what is Cacao Brittle? It is simply chocolate flavored, banana chips. I read the ingredients on the label and realized that I had all the ingredients I needed to recreate this GF chocolate yumminess. Banana, cacao powder, cacao nibs, almonds, coconut, maple syrup, vanilla extract, cinnamon, salt. Throw everything into a food processor, until it turns into a beautiful chocolate, chunky mixture. Place it on a parchment lined cookie pan. Roll it out, so it evenly covers the pan, using a sheet of Saran Wrap (it’s very sticky). Remove the Saran Wrap.
Now it needs to be dehydrated. I don’t have a dehydrator, but my oven has very low temperature settings. So, I set the oven to 150 degrees, put the pan in the oven and crossed my fingers. Every hour, I checked on it’s progress. 4 hours into the process, I could tell it was going to take much longer than I thought. At that point, I removed the pan from the oven. The brittle was pliable, but solid, so I began breaking it into pieces to speed up the dehydration process. Then I went to sleep, trusting that it would be perfect in the morning……and it was!
My brittle was much thicker, almost like a thin chocolate cookie. Joy! I figured it out on my first try! Now, I want to try some variations, with different nuts, spices and flavors:) It does occupy your oven for 10 hours, but do it overnight, like I did and it makes it all worth it!
- 1 banana
- 2 handfuls of almonds (or any nut of your choice)
- 2 handfuls of shredded coconut
- 1 handful of cacao nibs
- 1/8 cup raw cacao powder
- 1/4 cup maple syrup to taste
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp salt to taste
- Process all ingredients in a food processor. Incorporate all ingredients, until you get the consistency you desire.
- Place onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and roll out evenly, placing cling wrap on top of the mixture. Remove cling wrap.
- Place in oven at 150 degrees or in food dehydrator. In 4-5 hours remove pan from oven and check the consistency of the brittle. It should break apart fairly easy, into large chips. Place back into the oven. Check again in 6-8 hours. Should be crispy all the way through, when it is done! Let it cool and then store in ziplock bag for 5 days.....it will be gone in 1 day:)