A Dairy-free Birthday Treat

Every year, on my birthday I bake a cake. Not this year, although I went back to dairy this year I decided to give myself the time to work on something else that I have been craving - Almond Butter cups!

As I mentioned in a previous post, we recently took an amazing trip to Vegas! It was wonderful to be in Vegas but also to be in the states again. There were so many things I had missed from my time living there. There were also so many new things that I wanted to try. When you follow various food blogs you get to see some of the delicious new things people are loving in America and around the world. Since my time living in the US, it seems that healthy eating has become much more prevalent and, with it, a whole bunch of exciting new healthy products. One of the things that had tempted me was the Justin's products and particularly his heathy peanut butter cups. However when I went to get some I saw that he included sea salt, which is something that I don't eat. So I disappointedly walked away =(

(It's an unfortunate belief that sea salt is more fancy or healthy than normal salt and therefore many healthy food companies include sea salt in an attempt to appeal to the healthier customer, however it ignores those that cannot take it)

However I never gave up on the idea of a healthy nut butter cup, and preferably my favourite nut butter - Almond! So for this birthday I decided to dedicate my baking time to chocolate work.

Almond Butter Cups

240g Dark Chocolate Chips
100g Almond Butter
50g Almonds, toasted and ground
1-2 tbsp Agave Nectar
1 tbsp Coconut Oil
1 tsp Salt


I used some of my delicious 70% + dark chocolate. I melted down two thirds of it and then added the final third to bring down the temperature and temper the chocolate. Then I poured them into my mini-cupcake cases

For the almond butter centre I mixed store bought almond butter with more toasted ground almonds to thicken it, coconut oil for smoothness, salt in enhance the flavour and a tiny bit of agave nectar for sweetness. I then made little balls and pushed it into the hardened chocolate cases

From there I froze the cups to cool everything and facilitate the covers hardening. Then poured on the bottoms from the tempered chocolate.And then I simply let them hardened et voila...

As you can possibly see, the bases are not completely flat. This is due to the container having a raised lip. However I appreciate the thick bases as it's a nice chunk of chocolate to balance the almond butter.

As you can also see I left some lovely chunks of almond, but this is obviously optional! So now I have my dream treats and I will definitely be making these again, even if they leave a little bit of clean up.....

I would highly highly recommend making these. They are incredibly delicious, vegan, healthy and full of goodness. The best part is that it lasts so much longer than cake. I ate one of these while I typed this tonight and there is still plenty more =)