Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Fat-Free, Refined-Sugar-Free, Super-Rich Chocolate Fudge Frosting

Fudgy frosting on top of my favourite mocha cake recipe
Imagine a rich, decadent chocolate cake frosting, which incidentally also tastes great on ice cream (or substitute of choice), and makes a great base for chocolate milk. Now imagine I told you that this frosting was completely fat-free, and also didn't use any icing sugar - in fact, it only has 1 tbsp of maple syrup, and the rest of the sweetness comes from fruit.  That's right: the whole frosting is based around dried dates.

Well, if you're like me, you're probably pretty skeptical. I certainly was when I first came across the recipe. But the end result won me over completely. This is now my go-to frosting recipe. It's safe to feed to all my friends and family with food restrictions, and better yet, it's easy to make, keeps in the fridge for weeks, spreads better than any chocolate icing I've made before, and I feel almost completely guilt-free when eating it.  And I have fed it to at least 50 people, all of whom thought it was delicious, and none of whom noticed it wasn't full of a million calories.

This recipe is taken from the Forks Over Knives cookbook. Forks Over Knives is the name of a documentary which advocates for a completely whole foods, plant-based diet (i.e. no animal products), with very little processed food and very low added oil/fat. The diet's founder, Dr. Colin Campbell, claims that adherence to the diet will prevent heart attack and drastically reduce the risk of cancer. I haven't had time to evaluate the claims (although it's on my to-do list), so I am not advocating for the diet one way or another. However, a family member of mine recently switched to the diet, so I got a copy of the cookbook so I could continue to cook for him. And whether or not I support the diet, I definitely support the cookbook, which has a ton of extremely innovative recipes which use outside-the-box thinking to achieve big taste in food without making use of fat or animal products. Case in point, this frosting.  Frosting typically requires a high-fat ingredient (typically butter, shortening, margarine or cream) to achieve the required thickness. In the process of eliminating the oil, this recipe turned to dates to provide thickness and texture, with the added (and awesome) side benefit of also eliminating highly-refined icing sugar.

Fudgy Chocolate Frosting

1 cup boiling water
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups dried & pitted dates, tough ends removed*
1 Tbsp maple syrup
Pinch salt
1/2+ tsp vanilla extract [I usually use at least 1 tsp, because vanilla + chocolate = heaven]

*I have always used bags of whole dried dates, and have never tried using the dried dates which have been packed into blocks. I would assume they would work, but the proportions might be different. In addition, I have always chopped the ends off the dates before using them, but I've never actually tried it without the additional chopping to see if it makes a major difference to the final product.

Put the boiling water and cocoa powder in a blender or food processor.  Blend til smooth. Be careful not to let the steam build up. Then add the other ingredients and blend until smooth and incorporated. Scrape down the sides as needed.  Refrigerate for at least 3 hours (although I recommend at least a day) before spreading on the cake, to let it thicken and let the flavours meld.

Note: I make the frosting in my food processor, and I tried making the recipe by throwing all the ingredients in together, rather than mixing the chocolate and water first. The result: hot chocolate explosion all over my kitchen. Adding the liquid first and then burying it with the dates seems to stop it from turning into the geyser the minute the blades start spinning on the dates. I imagine this is equally critical when using a blender, because blenders usually won't work without a requisite amount of water near the blades. Similarly, don't try making a double recipe all at once, unless you happen to have an extremely large food processor or blender, otherwise you'll have messy and burning chocolate everywhere. (I've done it. Twice. It's not fun.)

Once frosted, store cakes in the fridge if keeping for long periods of time, because the frosting is more perishable than some conventional frostings. (If you're going to eat the cake over the course of a day, it's not a big deal.) I've stored the frosting in my fridge for 3 weeks without problem - although it rarely lasts that long, because I eat it with chopped fruit or mix it with almond milk to make delicious chocolate milk goodness.

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