Laurita's Cantina: Chocolate Pomegranate Balls

Valentine's Day is in the air. Earlier today, we gazed upon some good-lookin' heart-y things. A couple weeks ago, I showed you even more. Now, let's introduce our taste buds to some serious chocolate-y goodness.


Today, Laurita's Cantina opened her kitchen to make some delicious Valentine's Day treats!

Cora got to try out the non-sugared version. And, it is official, the girl loves herself a "pom."

Now, who wants to make some Dark Chocolate Pomegranates With Coconut?

You do? Yayyyy!!! What if I tell you that some of them have paprika on them? Still interested?

Ingredients:

• Pomegranates (I used 2)
• Dark Chocolate (I used about half a pound of Trader Joe's dark chocolate)
• Many random ingredients as toppers including coconut, salt, caramel, paprika, almond butter, and various combinations of those items.

The How-Tos:

• Get those seeds out of your pomegranates! Cut your pomegranate into 4 quarters. Put it in a giant bowl filled with water and start pushing and pulling those seeds out. It is kind of fun, but be warned: wear an apron (photo below)!

Here is one of my favorite t-shirts after my time with the pomegranates. I even tried to be super careful. Why oh why does "be super careful" not mean "put on an apron" to me?

The stains aren't bad, but this photo was taken after I exploded the shirt with cold water and sprayed some stain remover on it. Cora thought the whole process was pretty funny. So, I snapped a photo of her. Her smiles and laughs fade as soon a camera is in her face. That is when she goes into an intense mode of trying to get the camera out of my hands and into hers.

In case you were wondering what Cora was up to while I was de-seeding the pomegranate... gymnastics. Here was my view:

Back to the recipe....

• As soon as the pomegranate seeds look like that lovely pinkish-red-seeded-bowl in one of the photos above, you are ready to chocolate-ify them.

• I put the chocolate on a pan on the stove and added a bit of almond milk. You could add any kind of milk or no milk at all. I just thought I would try to sweeten up the dark chocolate a bit. Honestly, I don't think it made any difference at all.

• I added the pomegranate, did some stirring and called the kettle done.

• The wax paper came out and gooey balls of chocolate and pomegranate were dropped on it.

• Time for the random ingredients! I will tell you now that putting salt and caramel on top together was, by far, the best topper. Coconut was a little too much. You could hardly taste the paprika; and that was probably a good thing. Almond butter was OK, but it would have been better without it. Caramel by itself was pretty good and salt stood alone pretty well too. 

• I put them in the freezer for about an hour and then into the fridge and they were ready to go. I don't recommend eating them frozen- you couldn't taste anything.

And, THE BIG WINNERS!

I am happy to say that I came up with this all on my own. I am sure other people have done the same thing, but there was no recipe or advice followed to make these tasty treats!

Anyone want to see a close-up of a pomegranate?

Valentine's Day is tomorrow, so dust off your apron and buy some pomegranates! If you are like me, I bet you already have some chocolate in the house to mix them with.