Raw Vegan snickers bars

This recipe is one of my favourites by far as it requires so little skill it's unreal all you need is a blender or food processor of some sort and a baking tray to make an insane supply of delicious sugary vegan goodness so get ready to make these incredible raw vegan snickers bars

Ingredients:

- 1 and a 3/4 cups of cashews

- 3/4 cup of coconut flour

- 3 cups of dates

-1 tablespoon almond butter

-A bit of vanilla extract

- small amounts of water

First lay out your baking tin and line with baking parchment. You may need a couple as this recipe makes a lot of delicious bars. Then blend together 1 and a half cups of cashews, 1 cup of dates and all of your coconut flour to make your base. Add a very tiny bit of water if it's having trouble blending and I find that blending small amounts at a time makes you get through the process a lot faster.

Then you spread that into your baking tins and stick them in the freezer while you make your caramel layer.

For the caramel layer blend together the rest of the dates, some vanilla extract and almond butter. You may also need a tiny bit of water here too to make the 'caramel' a little softer and easier to blend and spread. Now remove the trays from the freezer and spread the caramel mixture on top. Once you've done that chop up the remaining cashews and sprinkle them on top of your trays.

What is this missing though? Chocolate! I went for the sweet freedom brand cocoshot as basically all the hard work had been done for me. Spread that across your bars then put the trays back in the freezer for a few hours.

Once the bars have set its time to cut them! Slice the trays into standard chocolate bar sized portions and enjoy. Any remaining bars can be put in tupperware and stored in the fridge or freezer for future use.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy your raw vegan snickers bars

Tina

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Living naturally soapnuts haul and review

I got a parcel in the post today and it was my new Living naturally soapnuts set! I received the medium organic soapnuts laundry pack from soapnuts.co.uk and here's what's inside!

500g of soapnuts, a pack of soda crystals, natural stain stick, organic sweet orange essential oil, an instruction leaflet, two washing machine canvas bags and a spare big soapnuts canvas bag.

So that's all very well but do they work? After researching soapnuts for a while I pretty much new how they worked but I read the instruction leaflet anyway just to make sure. 

I then found some of my dirtiest laundry and threw in a small canvas laundry bag with 5 soapnuts inside. I thought I'd test the cleaning of the soapnuts alone without the soda crystals first to see if they were really cleaning my laundry or not. I'd also read that the heat of the water should be at least 40 degrees for the soapnuts to begin working so that's what I did and I waited the 45 minutes for my machine to finish.

So was my laundry clean when it came out? Surprisingly yes! They smelt fresh when they came out was much more refreshing than my old scent filled detergents not really cleaning my clothes but only masking the smell of them. Overall I am extremely impressed with my soapnuts and I'll be reviewing the stain stick and soda crystals soon. 

Have you tried soapnuts before? How did you find them? Let me know in the comments below.

Tina

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Three simple low waste swaps

Want to reduce your environmental impact but with as little effort as possible? Make some of these easy swaps today!

Disposable water bottles

Do you know what's better than disposable water bottles? Water you don't have to pay for and doesn't have and leached BPA hiding in it! Get yourself a reusable bottle quick as there are enough on the market to suit every budget!

I'm personally a big fan of the klean kanteen water bottles particularly the one with the bamboo lid. It's my go to for work, camping and festivals! I'm a big fan!

If your budget doesn't quite stretch that far though look no further than ikea and there Korken range of reusable glass bottles which start from as little as £2.25

Carrier bags

Get a canvas bag. Easy right I'm sure with the recent 5p bag charges in England you pretty much do this anyway every time you go to a store but did you ever think about the little bit of plastic bag still in your life when you go to pick up your fruit and veg once a week? What do you do about that then? Produce bags are the way forward. There are so many available at the moment and if for whatever reason they get dirty you just stick them in the laundry! Reusable produce bags are available from flip and tumble, Eco bags and hands on hemp!

Paper towels

If you spill something on your counter what do you use? A paper towel? What's wrong with the pile of tea towels and flannels you've probably got stockpiled somewhere under a sink? Nothing? Then use those and say goodbye to an uneeded expense and hello the that smug feeling of helping the environment without spending a penny.

I hope you liked this post and look out for my other simple and easy low waste swaps.

Tina

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Easy Vegan Sushi

Making vegan sushi

Making sushi is a lot simpler and easier than you think and is really cheap too which makes it even better in my opinion.

What you'll need

Nori seaweed (available in most supermarkets now)

Sushi vinegar

Rice (I use brown rice)

Cucumber or avocado

First boil your rice until it's cooked through. I find about 75g of rice is enough for two nori sheets of sushi.

Once your rice is cooked throw in a splash of rice vinegar, then mix and leave to cool.

While you're waiting for your rice to cool slice your cucumber or avacado into strips. I find around a quarter of a cucumber is more than enough.

Now it's time to put it all together! A rolling may would be good but to be honest you don't really need one. Lay your cooled rice thinly on the nori leaving around an inch on each side to allow for rolling. Place your cucumber slices in the middle then spread a light amount of water on the edges of the nori as this allows the sushi to stick a bit better. 

Now you just roll your sushi!

Once you've made your rolls it's time to slice it. The sharper the knife the better! To make the sushi hold up better wetting the knife before each slice. Put some soy sauce and chilli sauce on the side and you're done!