Raspberry Beret!

Today Eva, Jinee and I got to go to the wonderful fantabulous and always full, Arnold's Way monthly potluck. And as my offering...I made a chocolate raspberry pie. I normally don't work with raspberries, but a character in my book announced she was baking a triple chocolate fudge cake with raspberry drizzle, and I thought, yeah...I want to do that to, but raw.

So, I planned out all of my ingredients, intending to follow a variation of a recipe by David Wolfe and Shazzie from Naked Chocolate, except when I returned home...I discovered that my dad had a secret taste for cashews and had cleaned me out of my stash completely! Various other ingredients seemed to have walked away, so I had to improvise quickly.

And I came up with the following recipe.

Crust:
Almonds
Raisins

Filling:
Walnuts
Raspberries
Vanilla
Agave Nectar
Himalayan Sea Salt
Raw Cacao

Topping:
Agave
Raw Cacao

So first I started by putting the crust ingredients in the food processor. Always start with the nuts first, otherwise they won't get processed properly. Once you get a nice fine meal from them, add in your dry fruit and let the processor go until your mixture forms a ball. After that press it into your pan.



Then move onto the filling. Again start with just the nuts, letting them become a fine meal like texture, then throw in the rest. I used two cartons of raspberries to make the filling. Once everything is sufficiently mixed, pour the filling over the crust.



Because the filling was very soft, I ended up freezing it for two hours before I added the topping. For that I just simply poured agave and cacao into a cup and whipped it with a fork. Then I tried to do a drizzle, but I ended up basically covering the entire thing. I finished off with a random pattern of raspberries.


And that was it, super easy and with an even easier clean up:-)

The potluck was really fun. We got to see Jean and Angela and the rest of their family who I adore! We got to hear from someone who is opening up a raw place on South Street which is super exciting, because...it's close and it's new and it's raw and YAY! Also met some cool new people including Jaime and Chad who seriously prepped up a storm with some amazing food.

And no one sent me the memo, but I somehow was on the same wavelength of everyone sitting in the back section of the store. We had ALL used raspberries in our recipes. Jean had raspberry flavors in her pie (delicious) and in her lemonade (also great!). But the best food award of the night goes to Chad, who made mini chocolate mountains with raspberries on top. I seriously saw those things from across the room and immediately went over to him asking what they were. I wish I had gotten a picture because they were so pretty and just as tasty. I got the recipe, and it's probably going to be the next thing I prepare, I can't wait!


Also I met with my critique group all morning long and I got some great feedback from them on my new revisions. The best part was probably Janine saying she loved it, because I haven't gotten her approval on anything yet. So that was a huge victory for me. I am really so happy with my new revisions. They actually feel like the sort of writing I would turn into my agent. So Im really happy. And I'm making wonderful progress. I should finish chapter 3's revision tonight, and hopefully knock out 4 and 5 tomorrow, because I really want to write chapter 6!!!
Everything is looking good!!!

UPDATE: Chapter 3 is DONE and DONE!!!!!! Yes, I rock:-)