Chocolate is Out Too. Hi, Carob.

 Whereas Baby Bear responded to dairy with quiet intestinal bleeding, he reacts to chocolate with good old-fashioned Excessive Fussiness. Bedtime? Forget about it! The good news is that as soon as I cut out the chocolate, he went straight back to zonking out after his 8 PM nurse.

So, I pulled out the carob again. Chocolate it isn't, but it's close enough to trick my body into believing it's chocolate, and that chocolate isn't so great after all (same thing stevia does with sweets). One thing I do like about carob is that it isn't excessively bitter like cocoa so it doesn't necessitate tons of added sugar. And there's no caffeine or theobromine. Carob looks and acts like cocoa, but has a more fruity taste, almost like chocolate + honey.

Here's how I made the carob chunks pictured above:

1/2 cup palm oil, just melted and removed from heat
1/2 cup carob powder
1 Tbs turbinado sugar, finely ground in a coffee grinder
1 tsp vanilla

Mix everything together, pour into a parchment-lined 8"x8" pan and refrigerate! Break into chunks after cooling. I tried these in brownies, and the palm oil just melted away, leaving carob-lined pockets behind. Not the effect I was hoping for!  But tasty enough raw.