Mum has another story to tell and this one is about her days as a vegetarian. It goes back to the early eighties when she bought herself a sesame/poppy seed grinder…. to make her own tahini, of course. The little white enameled grinder looked not unlike the larger, cast metal meat mincer of her grandparents’ day. It had a funnel at the top, a handle for cranking, and a clamp to attach it to the edge of a table. But instead of chewing up chunks of raw meat or cold roast lamb leftovers, this little darling would only have sesame seeds…a true vegan!

Mum recalls the first time she made tahini with her grinder. It took forever to fill a small jar and the result was disappointing. The tahini tasted raw and bitter because mum had unwittingly used raw sesame seeds instead of lightly toasted ones. The moral to this story is always toast your sesame seeds if you want your tahini to taste ‘normal’. But there is also a gentle reminder here for those who wish to eat only raw food… traditional, everyday tahini is not a raw product because the sesame seeds are toasted.

So, in order to make a really raw treat using tahini you need to use a tahini made with raw seeds or do as I do for this slice; simply use raw sesame seeds rather than tahini. They will grind up fairly well in a high speed blender along with the other caramel ingredients saving you a lot of expense. For a super smooth caramel, you may want to process a large batch of raw sesame seeds in a food processor first and use this home-made tahini in place of of the raw sesame seeds.

What about that slightly bitter taste from the raw sesame seeds? No true vegan caramel-everything-lover is going to put up with any hint of that! Not to worry, I have the perfect rescue remedy to save this caramel treat from such an embarrassing outcome. My rescue remedy does not come in a dark, little bottle filled with Bach flower essences but relies on the art of distraction. What is needed here is a subtle blend of maple syrup, lucuma powder and mesquite powder to provide sufficient caramel flavour to smooth out any ‘wrinkles’ of bitterness. And these three raw-vegan-friendly amigos do the job to perfectioni.

Maple syrup is an old friend in many households these days but the other two heroes…lucuma powder and mesquite powder may not be so well known therefore let me introduce you to them.

Lucuma powder is a dull, beige coloured powder that comes from an exotic fruit grown in Peru. The lucuma fruit is dried at low temperatures and then ground to a powder and sold these days as a superfood due to its’ nutrient content. It has a caramel-like creamy sweetness not unlike malted milk powder. In fact, you can use lucuma to add a malt-like flavour to smoothies, ice-cream, and anything caramel.

Mesquite is the North American name for a small, pod-bearing tree that is native to America and Mexico. The pods of this tree have been used for centuries as a source of food by the original inhabitants of the dessert plains – these trees thrive in hot, arid conditions. The custom of grinding the pods into a flour to use as food has taken an interesting twist these days as mesquite powder is now marketed as a superfood because it is raw, vegan, high protein, high mineral, and has a very low GI. It looks and tastes a bit like lucuma but I would say there is a hint of burnt toffee thrown in there as well.

Maple syrup, lucuma, and mesquite are my favorite raw vegan caramelos. They will vamp up the caramel while playing down the slightly bitter flavour of the sesame seeds. And of course, there is the salt factor. Sesame and caramel need salt. Salt is the ‘icing on the cake’ for this slice because it will balance any residual hint of bitterness while enhancing the sweetness of the caramel.

Raw Vegan Salted Caramel Slice is low FODMAP friendly as long as you stick to one slice per sitting. Sesame seeds do contain oligos so that is why you need to go easy if you are super sensitive to this particular FODMAP. There are no dates, nor cashews used in this caramel slice because they may send the FODMAP levels way too high. But who would complain about that when you can have brazil nuts and maple syrup instead? No one in this household is complaining about it…that’s for sure.

“Cranking the wooden handle on my little seed grinder and watching the creamy paste ooze out the other end was so therapeutic not unlike using a cold-pressed juicer” says mum, “you are really living in the slow-food moment and it’s so, so slow when it comes to hand grinding your own tahini.” Since those days high speed kitchen gadgets have taken over our bench tops and even mum succumbed to the pressure of life and the dream of having more time on her hands to cram in more things per minute, per hour, per day. With babies to care for and nappies to wash (disposable nappies had been invented but they were only for those who could afford them) mum’s tahini making days became a blissful dream of a bygone era and the little white grinder spent its’ remaining days clamped to a black marble topped kitchen cupboard with a tea towel draped over it’s wooden handle….a little wooden handle that only got turned once again when each of my siblings, me included, grew tall enough to reach it.

RAW VEGAN SALTED CARAMEL SLICE

base

70g whole almonds

70g brazil nuts

70g fine coconut

60g raw coconut oil

40ml maple syrup

1x pinch pink himalayan salt

caramel

100g sesame seeds (soak for 4 hours in salted filtered water), drained

100g brazil nuts

160g raw coconut oil

180ml maple syrup

60g lucuma powder

20-30g mesquite powder

80ml filtered

1 pinch pink himalayan salt

chocolate

30g cacao butter, melted

60g coconut oil, melted

30-40g cacao maca powder*

60ml maple syrup

Prepare a square baking tray by lining with non-bleached baking paper.

To make the base place all ingredients in a food processor. Process until bread crumb consistency. Lightly press into prepared tray. Set aside.

To make the caramel place the sesame seeds, brazil nuts and maple syrup in a high-speed blender. Blend until smooth and creamy. Add the remaining ingredients. blend until well combined. Spread over base and place in the freezer.

To make the chocolate place all ingredients into a small bowl. Mix until combined. Remove tray from the freezer and spread over the chocolate layer. Place in the refrigerator for 30-40 minutes or until firm set. Remove and wait 10 minutes before slicing into squares.

Store leftovers in the refrigerator but also remove 15 minutes prior to eating.

*you can make your own mix of cacao and maca powder using 15/20g of each powder.