Recipe | Durian Fudge Balls Vegan-style

My facebook feed is full of durian. But lately, my belly is not. So when vegan chef Johnny Freesh’s Durian Coconut Fudge popped up, I started drooling. It looked absolutely divine, but I’m a picky eater with multiple food sensitivities and the nuts didn’t work for me. So I turned to friends for help designing a nut-free, vegan durian fudge. The result: raw-mazing.

This recipe is incredibly simple and uses only 3-4 ingredients, depending on your mixology. It’s the genius of Ryan Lewis, a good friend who has smashed serious amount of durians with me at the Woodstock Fruit Festival in both 2011 and 2013.

Ryan is a trained raw food chef specializing in low fat and nut free recipes. He shared this recipe on his new youtube channel, ReEvolve Health. And he mentioned us, at Year of the Durian! Don’t we feel special.

The original recipe calls for coconut flakes, but since I didn’t have any and for some unexplained reason dried coconut seems to give me a sore throat, I skipped the coconut flakes and used the only other dry, sweet powder I had on hand: carob. You can also use cocoa powder, chia seeds, sesame seeds, sugar granules, coffee powder, or as Ryan suggests in the video, chai spices. Durian chai? Now that’s a novel idea!

Ingredients

• 8-10 medjool dates
• 1 large pod of durian (try really, really hard not to eat this straight up. Willpower.)
• 1/4 cup carob or cocoa powder

Whoops. Better get more durian.

1. Mash dates to a smooth, thick paste. In the recipe, Ryan uses a food processor to get the date whip perfectly smooth, but since I don’t have one I used a fork and manual labor. These dates were particularly soft so it was possible, if not easy. Not all dates can be mashed with a fork.

2. When the date paste is smooth, or your arm is tired, add the chunk of durian and mash again, using a circular whipping motion to get it really creamy smooth.

3. Use your fingers or a spoon to grab a tablespoon of the durian-date whip. Roll between your hands into a ball. To keep stickiness at bay, start with wet hands and keep a bowl of water nearby. Mine weren’t very sticky and I didn’t need to use extra water.

4. Gently roll the ball in the carob or cocoa powder until it takes on a delicious chocolate-hue and looks just like a chocolate truffle. But better, because it has durian inside.

Here’s how mine came out:

SUPER YUMS. The combination of durian and dates was so good I ended up licking the sticky debris off my palms. Gross, but totally worth it.

In retrospect, I also think the carob was a good move. It really seemed to complement the existing chocolatey undertones in durian with a gestalt effect that was just as rich and fudgy as the real deal. But better, cuz it has durian.

You can eat them right away or put them in the refrigerator or freezer to harden up and get chewy. We did both.

Thanks again to Ryan Lewis for this amazing recipe! If you liked this recipe, you should totally check out his new channel and tell him how cool he is for thinking up this awesome recipe. We will definitely be making it again.