I have the world’s most prodigious sweet tooth, as a matter of fact I don’t think I have one, I have a whole moth full! This condition causes havoc with weight control and keeping cholesterol down, but it has also led to some of the most amazing culinary discoveries; salted caramel fudge, rose water Turkish delights and chili chocolate, word and ice cream… ALL OF IT. All these things are worth a couple more gym minutes :).
But lately I have been really trying to keep the sweet things to a minimum, I am not getting any younger (/0\!!) and after a rather scary cholesterol test result the decision was made to keep them little something-somethings out of the house. If it is not there, you can’t eat it, right? But what to do when the days are cooling down rapidly and that late afternoon coffee is just begging for a little bit of sweetness to stave off the winter blues? In steps volstruismis. I can not for the life of me remember how or when these cookies got to be known as volstruismis in my family, but it certainly rolls of the tongue much quicker than no-bake chocolate, oats and coconut cookies.
Anyway these puppies take about 15 minutes from start to finish and it is a very good alternative to store-bought choccies. It delivers that chocolate punch but with a spoonful of healthy oats and coconut to appease your inner health critic.
The Ingredients
- 57 g butter
- ¼ cup milk
- ¾ cup sugar
- 3 tbsp cocoa
- 1 tbsp instant coffee granules (optional)
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1½ cup raw oats
- ¾ cup desicated coconut
Method
- Melt the butter, sugar, milk and cocoa over medium heat, stirring it occasionally until the butter is melted.
- Let the mixture come to a boil, add the coffee at this point if you want, and let it bubble away for about 2-2½ minutes.
- Remove from the heat and add the vanilla. This releases the most delicious aroma, think French Vanilla Cafe Mocha, it smells good enough to bury your face in. But don’t do that…
- Add the oats and coconut mixture to the syrup and mix it properly to cover all the dry ingredients with the syrup.
- Spoon clusters onto wax paper.
The only tricky bit involved in this recipe is the syrup. If you let it boil and bubble for too long the syrup becomes ‘dry’ and although the oats and coconut will be coated with chocolate, the clusters won’t set and you will have a deliciously unhealthy chocolate muesli type product. If you take it off the heat too quickly the syrup will be too ‘wet’ – I am sure there are technical terms for all this, but I don’t know them – and the clusters won’t set either. You’ll end up with sticky chocolate blobs – which still taste good, so no damage done. This is really one of those recipes where screwing up doesn’t really matter, the end product is still a winner :)!