Strawberry Strategies

Warning: I'm not a food blogger. I'm just hungry and have a lot of extra fruit.

Do you like strawberries? I do, they are probably close to my favorite fruit after bananas and pineapple. No wait, I love blueberries and blackberries and and and ...Okay strawberries are good, but so are most all fruit, lol 
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Recently I went to the market and strawberries were on offer! How crazy is that? It's the middle of winter! But I couldn't resist, so I purchased $5 worth and had an over flowing bag of delicious, red goodness. This week I’ve been adding them to nice cream and smoothies but I still have a huge bag left. I searched on line for easy strawberry vegan recipes and decide to try a cake and candy recipe.

Let's pretend its summer and eat too many strawberries!

Am I the only one that gets cacao powder EVERYWHERE when I fake bake? Excuse the mess, plz

I dumped the strawberries in the blender with a homemade coconut butter. Blended it as a separate layer to the Chocolate  and froze each layer, before adding the next layer to the candy mold. 

These are really large molds. (Like you could make soap in them, wtf? The molds are food grade, I checked again if you were worried.) It took a long time to for the whole thing to freeze solid, but the favor was really, really good. The "chocolate" part was my standard PB cup recipe without the peanut butter.
You remember these, right?

These are soooo good!

You will never want these again.

I was looking for a link to the recipes and can't find it.  I know I have shared it before, but I am posting it again.

Raw and Simple Vegan Peanut Butter Cups 
INGREDIENTS:
    •    ½ cup of coconut oil (melted)
    •    ¼ cup of raw cacao powder
    •    2 tablespoon of pure maple syrup (maple syrup for vegans)
    •    Raw peanut butter or almond butter (stir well and place in fridge ahead of time)

INSTRUCTIONS:
        Mix the coconut oil, cacao powder, and maple syrup together in a bowl to make the raw chocolate.
        Pour a small amount of chocolate (1-2 teaspoons) into each candy mold to create the bottom.
        Place in the freezer for 5 minutes until completely firm.
        Place a small dollop of peanut/almond butter (I use my ½ teaspoon) onto the center of each cup.
        If your peanut/almond butter isn't completely solid, place the tray back in the freezer for a few minutes to solidify.
        Add more raw chocolate to each cup until it is filled to the top.
Place back in the freezer for another 5-10 minutes until solid.
        Store in the fridge.
Quick and super great tasting treat! 

So that recipe (without the peanut butter) was the bases for my strawberry experiment.  Do you have a fav strawberry fake bake or raw recipe? Please share if you do! 

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Into the food processor... and soon to be candy.

Down side? The strawberry part melts straightway.

Even in fridge it melts. I need to do a but of work on that, but oh well I had company and these were soon gone! #Win!  

How pretty would these be for Valentine's Day?

2nd round I replaced coconut butter with homemade coconut cream and ended up with a firmer, creamer candy. Next I tried a Fake Bake Vegan Cheesecake with a strawberry layer.

The cake:
This would be very pretty in a springform pan, with this layer on top. I added cocao shavings between layers for an extra treat.  It also needed to stay in freezer, but it was so good and very filling.  The  "cheesecake" part was raw cashews and the crust was simple date/pecan mix. Honestly no one minded it needed to be eaten cold! 

It was the same basic recipe as the Blackberry Raw Cheesecake and just as good.

MMMMMMmmmmmm Just looking at these pictures makes me hungry again. I think I will make another trip to the market.

Catch you later-