Valentine Chocolate Lips

giant chocolate lips stuffed with salted caramel filling
next time, will sprinkle with fleur de sal

I have been playing around with healthy homemade chocolates for the past few months.  I have been using this silicone mold to make really cute dinosaurs for after school snack, with my own version of this awesome chocolate coconut energy bar recipe.  I  will have to post the recipe with pictures. This week, I saw these Valentine Rawlos and nearly screamed in excitement with the salty caramel filling made with dates, maple syrup and good quality sea salt--I realize that I am posting two recipes from My New Roots in a row (and perhaps three with black rice coconut rice pudding).  I just love this blog on so many levels.  As soon as I saw the heart silicone mold used, I knew that I had to have a similar one but had no time to order one from Silikomart on Amazon in time for Valentine's Day.  So what did I do?  I was lucky to find these cute lips at Michael's and problem solved.  I also picked up some lollypop sticks to go with the lips, but then couldn't figure out how to insert them before the chocolates set.  Any ideas?  Wouldn't it be cute to have the lips on a stick?  

Eating chocolates with food allergies poses lots of problems.  And when making them, how do you know if the ingredients are free of cross-contamination with soy, dairy, gluten, nuts... I am going to research where to find guaranteed nut-free cocao powder and cocoa butter.  For this recipe I used this cocao powder.  I wrote to Navitas and got this response about cross-contamination with nuts:

"I am pleased to inform you that our organic, Raw Cacao foods and the entire Navitas Naturals line is gluten free, dairy free, soy free, and corn free. We do not have our line tested for parts per million of gluten currently, but we are strongly considering getting certification in the future. Since our entire line of foods and all of our processing and packaging facilities are gluten free, there is an extremely low risk of cross contamination.

We do sell Raw Cashews. This is the only nut in our facility. We package Cashews on the same bagging equipment as other foods. We do clean all of the equipment between runs."

Would it work with this cocoa powder from Vermont Chocolates?  Raw cacao powder is not the same as unsweetened alkalized cocoa powder, but my knowledge is limited.  

As for the cacao butter, I used this one from Artisana. This is the first time I've used cacao butter.  I have been enjoying their coconut oil and butter for some time now.  The package says that the facility is free from gluten, soy, dairy and peanuts.  But not the case for tree nuts......Oh, this is a headache!  I eat these products, but I am an adult.  Would you give them to an allergic child? 

Click here for the recipe! I used a simple glass bowl over a pot of simmering water for the chocolates (decided to follow a recipe for once instead of playing around with it during Baby's nap) and the Thermomix for the filling using Turbo and frequent scraping down the sides of bowl while alternating mixing on speed 4.  Here is a good Themomix dairy-free chocolate recipe with quality ingredients. Jo has the best recipes along with a lot of awesome ingredient tips.  And when it comes down to it, my daily focus is on the ingredients both for allergies, quality and nutrition.