Organic Raw Cacao Powder from Viva Labs Revealed

Can a company called Viva Labs made an organic cocoa powder that is useful in recipes, tastes great, and is healthy for you?  They think so with their Viva Labs Organic, Non-GMO, Raw Cacao Powder, 16 oz. Pouch that they sent us a pound bag of recently.  Their contact person also sent me a little ecookbook but the recipes required a lot of the other products they produce so instead of trying one of their recipes, I tried a very simple recipe.  I figure the greater potential market for this product isn't the raw food movement or vegan but everyday folks like me and you who just want to see if there are better products out there for a reasonable price.

The biggest problem with this sample was the bag itself.  I cut it open along the line marked on the package and as you can see it opened up very wide making it easy to measure out.  That's the upside of the bag.  The down side is that even though I tried and tried I could not get it to reseal.  In the photo I believe you can see that it does have a resealable lip but I just couldn't get both side to align.  The result was a less safely sealed product compared to traditional canisters and the use of clips that I normally use for other things. Because I can't trust in the seal now I'll have to use this up quickly so I'm going to try the recipe below again... let's move on to that recipe.

I decided a great treat to test the flavor and use of any cocoa would be a flourless cake that uses only cocoa, not other chocolate and not flour.  I based my recipe on this four-ingredient one from Prepared Pantry.  Making it with ingredients I have on hand changed the recipe in this way:

8 eggs became 7 egg substitutes + 1T water (I'll leave out the water next time because the cake seemed a bit softer than it should have at the right temperature)

1.25 cups sugar became 1.25 cups sugar substitute (I'll reduce this just a bit, by 1/8th of a cup next time as well to see about making it a bit darker tasting)

1/2 cup butter became 1/2 cup light margarine

1 cup rich dark cocoa became 1 cup Viva Labs Organic Raw Cacao Powder

I followed the directions and the result was a sweet chocolate cake that was good on it's own.

It was also good with a little whipped cream or chocolate fudge drizzled on top of it.

Later I made a second test cake with 1/4 cup less sugar and the result was much darker and oddly a little less moist.  I topped it with a simply powdered sugar and cocoa frosting with orange extra flavoring.


Aside from the bag issue and general questions about safety, this is just raw cacao powder and it worked great.  Therefore this earns a Sacrament Status! If you'd like to try this Raw Organic Cacao Powder from Viva Labs the best way is through Amazon and if you use the link below you'll also help out The Chocolate Priestess who tested and brought this post to you.