Apparently, women think about chocolate more then men. Some scientists think this is because eating cacao helps release a cavalry of dopamine in the female brain, the same substance released during orgasm. It’s even been suggested that when women eat chocolate, it affects activity in the cerebral hemisphere responsible for regulating sexual desire.

Only one way to find out …

Sea Salt, Date & Cacao Halva

3 tablespoons extra virgin coconut oil
1 mug light tahini (circa 340g)
Up to 1/2 cup date syrup (125ml)
Good pinch of flaky sea salt
2 tablespoons carob powder (can be subbed with cocoa/cacao)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 tablespoons raw cacao nibs

1. In a small saucepan, melt your coconut oil and date syrup together over a gentle flame.

2. Keeping the pan on a very low heat, add the remaining ingredients together, mushing with a fork. Ensure the oil is well mixed. Taste, and adjust with vanilla or sweetener. Work quickly, as the oil will begin to separate from the other ingredients as soon as it starts cooling. If this starts to happen, whack up the heat.

3. Line a small rectangular container (a little lunchbox perhaps?) with cling film so that it comes out over the sides. Transfer your gorgeous gooey gloss into the lined container and tickle with more cacao nibs and flaky salt (if you have any left).

4. Transfer to the freezer for 6 hours before indulging. Store it there too, as it melts quite quickly at room temperature.

We serve this in great big hunks and chards, alongside coffee and hygge (naturally).

******

This recipe is from page 208  Tasty. Naughty. Healthy. Nice. cookbook my friends. One of 140 healthy-assed recipes to help turn your kitchen into a wholefood mecca. 

If you live in the States, you can nail 20% off both my cookbooks this month by using the code SUSANJANE20 at the checkout of my US publisher’s online store www.RoostBooks.com. Here’s hoping I lovebomb your kitchen! Namaste. xxx

Unicorn toast sounds like something a softly spoken, vegan nanny makes for children after completing their origami homework and positive affirmation chanting. Right?

Wrong. It’s for spoiled brats living in L.A. and bonked-up adults like me. Unicorn toast is scorching hashtags all over the world, and accessing the deepest of crazy childhood recesses. Our synapses are trip wiring on the stuff, and our eyes are beating like voodoo drums. We. Can’t. Get. Enough.

Unicorn toast is set to be the biggest food trend of 2017. All you need is a thick slice from a square-shaped loaf, such as Irish brown bread. Some cream cheese (DIY recipe in my Sunday Independent column this weekend my friends). And food colouring. Breathe – I haven’t completely lost my mind. Wholefood junkies have thankfully hijacked the movement with Mother Nature’s library of colours; yellow turmeric, red raspberry, pink strawbs and green matcha powder. And guess who won the dance off? Let’s hear it for the plant-powered hippies!

Unicorn lattes have even started making guest appearances on Starbucks menus all over NYC, turning suited stock brokers into a gaggle of giddy girls on their coffee break. And now, the unicorn bonbon is exploding across the Irish countryside from Cobh to Cong.

You don’t need to stock up on 12 different plant colours. Stress gives you inflammation. Even I’m not that unreasonable. Just start by choosing two unicorn shades from the following …

pink raspberry powder
purple beetroot powder
blueberry powder
orange gojiberry powder
green barleygrass or wheatgrass powder
red strawberry
cherry powder
yellow turmeric*
pastel green Matcha green tea powder*

(*You’ll only need half a teaspoon for these final two colours, in the recipe below).

Unicorn Bonbons

Makes 26

1 teaspoon of plant-powered colouring (see options above)

120g desiccated coconut

45ml coconut oil

60ml honey (or rice malt syrup for vegans)

2 tablespoons coconut flour

Squeeze of lemon

Pinch of sea salt

1 Using a food processor, blitz the ingredients into a soft snowball. My food processor usually takes 20 seconds to do this.

2 Pinch a piece of dough and roll into a smooth bonbon. Repeat until all the dough is gone. Chill until set.

3 Repeat the recipe, with lots of different colours. These unicorn bonbons freeze really well if you run out of refrigerator storage or stomach space.

Taking the hell out of healthy.

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Out next week, the paperback version of The Virtuous Tart, in all good Irish bookstores. New price too. Twit-twoooo!

What do you get when you blend up a popular nut, a green vegetable and Lisa Hannigan’s new album? A Nobel prize in chemistry.

Please don’t’ ask me to explain what happens at an atomic level – I haven’t got the foggiest. The end result feels inexplicably gifted, like Allan Rickman and Sharleen Spiteri dirty dancing at the petrol pump.

Music can heighten the enjoyment of a recipe. Watch what happens to your appetite when you play Bob Dylan on repeat – your synapses will feel like a potted geranium dropped from six stories high. Don’t get me wrong. I have all his albums. But just not in the kitchen. Crank up the volume on Lisa Hannigan when you’re at the stove, and her groove will magically transfer to your fingertips and dimples. Food just tastes better. She gives me wings.

When cashew nuts are soaked for six hours, they blend up like thick cream. Cashews are the David Blaine of vegan ice cream. Magic.

Add to this sumptuously whipped avocado and sticky honey, and you’ve got yourself a blueprint for any dairy-free ice pop.

Cashews have a neat supply of copper, a rather important trace mineral for our bods. Copper is a Big Wig for a whole suite of essential enzymes, such as superoxide dismutase. SOD (geek speak for superoxide dismutase y’all) buoys up our mojo and energy production. And you know what? A good handful of cashew nuts rings in at over 100% of your recommended daily intake of copper. Score.

Dark Chocolate & Mint Ice Cream

I’ve added matcha green tea powder for its groovy glow (and to give my frontal lobe a good rave). Then great big chunks of 70% dark chocolate, because St Patrick is all about chocolate. I. Think.

Drop the coconut milk, if you prefer less ice in your popsicle.

100g unsalted cashews

2 avocados

1 tin full-fat coconut milk

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

5-8 tablespoons rice malt syrup (for IQS fans) or raw honey (stronger tasting) 

Pinch of sea salt

1 teaspoon matcha green tea powder

½ teaspoon real peppermint extract

40g your favourite dark chocolate

Soak your cashews in filtered water for anything between 6 and 12 hours (overnight is perfect). Drain and discard and soak liquid. Tip the softened nuts into a high-powered blender and add the remaining ingredients, all except for your chocolate of course. Blitz the bejaysus out of it. When it’s silky and creamy, stir through your chunks of chocolate.

Spoon into lolly molds and freeze for 6 hours before annihilating in one glorious binge. Just kidding! Keep a lid on that lust!