When The Raw Chef makes desserts, you can rest assured what’s on your plate is good for you. Forget refined sugar and heavily processed ingredients, Russell James’ masterpieces boast not only nutrients but loads of flavor. I love these Maca Ice-Cream & Cacao Crackle Sandwiches, which are perfect for summer cocktail parties. They look fantastic, taste incredible and are fun to make. Enjoy!
For the ice-cream
1 1/2 cups cashews
1/3 cup agave
1 vanilla pod, insides scraped out
3 cup almond milk
3 tablespoons maca root powder
2 teaspoons lemon juice
Pinch salt
- Blend all ingredients in a high-speed blender until smooth.
- Pour into an ice-cream maker. Alternatively you can pour into a container and place in the freezer to set hard. Once it’s frozen, cut into chunks and run through a juicer with the blank homogenising plate on. This gets rid of any ice crystals that may have formed.
- When ice-cream is soft enough to work with shape it into a cylinder (a metal ring is great for this) and re-freeze.
For the cacao crackles
1/2 cup cacao butter
1/4 cup cacao powder
1/4 cup agave
3 tablespoons cacao nibs
- Blend all ingredients except the cacao nibs in a high-speed blender.
- Use a spoon to drop small amounts of the mixture onto a non-stick surface, such as a Paraflexx sheet, to form circles only slightly bigger than the ice-cream cylinders.
- Leave to set hard.
Assembly
- Take the ice-cream cylinders from the freezer and let them soften slightly for a few minutes. That way the next stage will work better.
- Sandwich each of the cylinders between 2 pieces of the cacao crackles. You may want to return them to the freezer at this point so the whole thing freezes together as one.
