by Narrelle Harris

I invented this recipe this year with advice from my vegan niece in part so we could have a new family traditional food together.

Ingredients

Base

• 250g pitted dates
• 1 dessertspoon coconut oil
• ½ cup almond meal (+ ¼ cup extra)
• ½ cup dessicated or shredded coconut
• 2 tablespoons raw cocoa powder (optional)

Topping

• Natural crunchy peanut butter, crunchy (should be fairly thin and easily spread)
• 1 punnet raspberries (or blueberries or whatever berry you like)
• Thick coconut cream (thickened, separated cream from an unshaken tin of coconut cream. I used a 200g carton of KanTong coconut cream)

Method

• Blend dates and coconut oil in a blender until it is a thick paste.
• Add ½ cup almond meal and the dessicated/shredded coconut and mix by hand until it forms a dense, sticky dough.
• Roll the dough into small balls in the well of your hand and then flatten the balls into a disk.
• Use the extra ¼ cup of almond meal to coat the case of the disk, so the sticky base won’t stick to the plate. (Makes twenty bases)
• Lay disks out on a plate, almond-meal side down.
• Spread a level teaspoon of natural crunchy peanut butter on top of each disk.
• Add a few berries to the top of each disk.
• Add a dollop of coconut cream on top of the berries.
• Eat!
• Try to stop.
• Fail.
• Eat some more.

Variations

• Add 2 tablespoons of raw cocoa powder to the base mixture for that chocolately taste.
• Add goji berries, almond pieces or other dried fruits and nuts to the base for different textures and flavour bombs
• Add more almond meal to get a drier, more biscuity base.
• If the coconut cream is too thin, make it thicker by adding chia seeds to coconut milk/cream and letting it sit for a while until you have a cream topping of the right consistency.

Traditionally, leather is an anniversary gift. One couple is about to take that in a very non-traditional way…