Not Your Grandma's Chocolate Pudding*

I don't know much about the raw food movement, but I do know that I love to try new recipes and am a sucker for hidden ingredients.  Last year I had a small obsession with trying recipes from the Deceptively Delicious cookbook.  Friends and family were treated to meals or desserts and then asked, "Can you guess what the secret ingredient is?".  I was hiding sweet potatoes in hot chocolate, spinach in brownies and cauliflower in just about everything.  Eventually I ran out of home made purees and haven't done much deceptive cooking or baking since (though my family is still wonders what I've got up my sleeve when they eat with me).  

 via a similar recipe at the sweet blog,  Lovely Morning

I've been very straight forward with my cooking lately, but last night I couldn't help myself.  I was reading my new issue of Mothering Magazine and came upon a recipe for something called raw choconana pudding.  I'm not normally a pudding lover, but when I saw a whole avocado and half a banana in the recipe I was hooked.  I quickly whipped up a batch and it was DELICIOUS.  Leif loved the stuff and even Jodi, who is a pudding lover with a very sensitive sense of smell, didn't notice anything but the coconut as being different.  I followed the recipe's recommendation to serve the pudding in layers with plain yogurt and nuts and it was yummy with and yummy without.  Here's the simple recipe:

Raw Choconana Pudding

1 avacado

1/2 a ripe banana

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/4 cup honey or agave syrup

1 Tbsp coconut oil

1 tsp. vanilla 

Combine in a food processor or blender and serve.

That's it - super simple, fairly healthy and a great intro to raw "cooking".  I've been meaning to try this recipe for raw carrot cake and thought it would be a winner on Leif's birthday at the end of the month.  Maybe I should give it a trial run this afternoon...

Find more raw food recipes (with photos) here.

* Actually, this is the kind of recipe my grandma would have enjoyed.  She too was a lover of avocados and a sucker for secret ingredients.