Healthy Snacks Club: Chocolate Envy

When you’re on a gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free diet, there are few things you miss more than dessert. Almost every tasty treat we’re used to enjoying contains something we’re not supposed to eat — and it’s not helping that we’re reading the funny francophile essays in Rosecran Baldwin’s Paris I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. The book is pretty great, and perfect for summer. It’s funny, easy to read, and helps us imagine ourselves in the City of Light instead of Alabama, the State of Humidity. But thinking about France also makes us want to indulge in guilty pleasures like espresso, cigarettes, champagne and chocolate.

Luckily, espresso is A-OK, as is champagne. (And we guess cigarettes are technically gluten-free, although they don’t really count as health food.) But what about chocolate?! We’re having withdrawls.

With a little experimenting, we found a pretty great way to satisfy our sweet tooths. Most hot chocolate mix and chocolate milk contains sugar and milk. But we combine two teaspoons maple syrup with two teaspoons cocoa powder for a really great chocolate sauce. Then we mix it with non-dairy milk (we like it with almond, because the nutty flavor complements the chocolate, but choose whichever you like). We love adding this sauce to espresso and blending it for Frosted Mochas, but you can use it for hot cocoa or chocolate milk, too.

It’s not exactly a chocolate croissant on the banks of the Seine, but it certainly cures our chocolate fix. Now, if only we rangle a couple of tickets to Paris …

Healthy Snacks Club runs every Friday on PostScript.