Hi, I’m Dr. Josh Axe and welcome to my kitchen. Today we’re going to be making chocolate fondue, only this time we’re not going to be using regular pasteurized dairy or processed milk chocolate. We’re going to be using dark chocolate and coconut milk for a great recipe that’s actually even low in sugar. For starters, what we’re going to do is you’re going to get a can of coconut milk, and you can find coconut milk in the Asian or ethnic food section of any store you go to. So step number one, warm up some coconut milk. I’m going to go to the burner here, we’re going to turn this to get this lit, put it on about medium high heat and then I’m going to take coconut milk, we like getting the organic coconut milk, and you’re going to pour about a third of a can of coconut milk or close to a half into the burner, into the skillet here.
The next thing we’re going to do here in just a minute is we’re actually going to be using stevia. Stevia is a no calorie natural sweetener, so we’re getting no calories. It’s not like some of the other dangerous sweeteners out there like aspartame and Splenda. It is 100% natural. Actually, it comes from the herb of a flower. The other thing we’re going to be using here is dark chocolate. So we’ve got Newman’s Own Organic Dark Chocolate as one of the ones we’ll be using today. Also, another brand that I like is the Endangered Species brand. So again, you can grab some dark chocolate, basically any store has this now. What you’re going to do is you’re going to take the dark chocolate and just go ahead and open it up and then you’re going to break off some of these pieces.
What I’m going to do is use about an entire bar in this, and you’ll just kind of break it off into chunks here, smaller pieces, drop it in the coconut milk and just let it get warm. What we’re going to do here is go ahead and just start stirring the chocolate in the coconut milk, and it really doesn’t take too long for this chocolate to get actually warmed up here in the coconut milk. It doesn’t take long at all, usually just about one to two minutes.
Okay, the chocolate and the coconut milk are totally mixed together now. The next step, if you want it a little bit sweeter, is adding in the stevia. Again, stevia is a no calorie natural sweetener. If you want this to be lower in sugar, stick with the stevia. If you don’t have stevia at home and you need it a little bit sweeter, the best thing to add is raw honey, raw agave nectar or a little bit of maple syrup, but I’m going to go ahead and use stevia here. You can pick up stevia in any natural health food store. So I’m just going to take this packet, open it up and just sprinkle the stevia on in there, and then I’m going to continue to mix about another 20 or 30 seconds here just getting it all together, making sure the stevia is in there really well.
Another thing you can do if you have it, is you can add in a little bit of vanilla extract. That’s another option here. But just keeping it simple, just chocolate, coconut milk and any sort of additional sweeteners you would want to use. You can kind of see the texture here when I pull it out. And if you want to make it even thicker, you can add in a little bit more chocolate as well, is another option there. And voila, chocolate fondue. Let me tell you about some of the health benefits of chocolate fondue. You never thought that dessert can be healthy but this dessert is. So a few things, coconut milk is amazing. Coconut milk has lauric acid, also known as medium chain triglycerides. They’re not nine calories like most fat, it’s actually eight calories, so coconut actually helps your body burn fat and helps you lose weight. The other thing we had in here was dark chocolate.
Dark chocolate has been shown to be one of the most potent antioxidants available today. The cocoa in dark chocolate is really what you’re looking for, so if I grab any sort of wrapper, like I will here from this dark chocolate, you’ll see there’s different numbers here. For instance, this dark chocolate has 72% cocoa. This other dark chocolate which is extremely dark is 88% cocoa, and so the higher the cocoa content the higher the antioxidant levels will be in the dark chocolate. You don’t want to do milk chocolate or the processed chocolate as much. You want to stick to dark chocolate because of the antioxidant benefits. The other thing we had is stevia, and there again, stevia has no calories. There’s no sugar involved and so it’s not going to affect your insulin levels, so it’s great for people. Typically it’s not going to affect people who have problems like diabetes or are overweight, any of those issues. The last thing here, we’re going to dip fruit in the dark chocolate. Some of my favorites are strawberries. Strawberries are one of the most nutrient dense fruits available and nutrient density basically means it has more vitamins, more minerals, and more antioxidants than any other fruits.
Similar thing with raspberries. Raspberries are full of antioxidants and phytonutrients. Bananas, also a good choice here, bananas are going to be really high in things like potassium and other minerals and electrolytes. It’s going to help your body recover faster. So let’s try this fondue out. Take this strawberry, dip it in there, delicious..
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