Coconut Almond Raspberry Bark

Looking for a delicious keto fat bomb recipe? Give this sweet and tangy Coconut Almond Raspberry Bark a try. It's gluten-free, dairy-free, and really popular with people that are trying to get started with keto and intermittent fasting.

First: What Is a Fat Bomb?

When you go into ketosis, you need a lot of fat to allow you to go from one meal to the next without getting too hungry. That’s a keto fat bomb, and I have lots of recipes available throughout my site, including this one.

Overall, these recipes aim to help people camouflage coconut oil and other sources of fat so they can consume enough of it without feeling overwhelmed. So let’s dive into the recipe.
 

Coconut Almond Raspberry Bark Ingredients

Raspberry bark:

• Frozen raspberries ½ cup

• Almonds ½ cup (not toasted)

• Erythritol - powdered. 1 tbsp

• Shredded coconut flakes - ½ cup
   

Chocolate sauce:

• ½ cup of dark chocolate keto chocolate chips (Lily’s)

• ¼ cup of coconut oil at room temperature
   

Total time: About 40 minutes

Directions

Start by running almonds and raspberries through a blender or food processor until thoroughly blended.

Sprinkle erythritol and shredded coconut. Mix well with a spoon or ladle. You don’t want to run it through the blender again here since this will mess up the “chocolate bark” consistency.

Line a dish with plastic wrap or parchment paper. Add the sweet mixture to the baking dish. Pack tightly.

For the chocolate bark sauce, combine dark chocolate chips and coconut oil. Melt it down.

Pour melted chocolate sauce over the coconut flake mixture.

Place in the freezer for at least 30 minutes. Take out and then remove it from the baking dish. Cut the cookie into pieces.

Now, here’s the secret. Make sure that, after you take it out of the freezer, you let it rest on the counter for 3-5 minutes before you enjoy it. The flavors will be much more delicious and you’ll find the whole dessert to be an awesome bark choice.
 

More Information: The Importance of Keto and Intermittent Fasting

So why do you need fat bombs, and what diet do they really work with?

In short: the keto diet with intermittent fasting.

Here’s why the switch to keto might be beneficial. When you make the switch to a keto diet, you’re switching from sugar fuel to fat fuel. This causes a lot of changes in your cells and in your body that are beneficial but somewhat difficult without treats like these fat bombs.

See, before ketosis, your body is running on sugar or blood sugar. It’s dependent mainly on stored sugar in your muscle and in your liver (which you don’t have a lot of) or on sugar in your diet for fuel.

So you have to constantly eat to keep the sugars up.

With the keto diet, you’re changing this and making your body dependent on fat. There are a few reasons for this:

• We have a lot more fat than stored sugar in our body, so it’s more regularly available for fuel. In fact, an average thin person has about 77,000 calories of stored fat! That’s a huge number, and it only gets higher for other members of the population.

• That fat is a better quality of fuel.

• Using fat for fuel actually speeds up weight loss and helps with body composition.

• You have more sustained energy throughout the day (check out our full video on the benefits of ketosis here).
   

Adaptation is getting your body into this state so you have cellular machines that are burning fat full-time.

This is great, but it doesn’t happen in a day. Again, this is where treats like fat bombs come in.
 

Why Are High-Fat Snacks Important During Keto-Adaptation?

To get to full keto-adaptation, there is a transition phase that your body goes through. In this phase, you’ll have lowered blood sugar without the fat really kicking in. This is where things can get physically uncomfortable:

Now, if you’ve ever dealt with low blood sugar before, you know some of the problems that it can cause, including:

• Headaches

• Shakiness

• Irritability or impatience

• Hunger

• Lightheadedness or dizziness
   

Luckily, intermittent fasting and fat bombs like the Coconut Almond Raspberry Bark can help you get through this.
 

Ingredient Spotlight:

Coconut

Why is coconut a healthy ingredient to incorporate into your keto diet? A few reasons.

Overall, coconut is considered to be a very healthy fat source when on the keto diet. This is, in large part, due to the health components of coconut oil:

• It’s over 50% MCTs: MCTs, or medium-chain triglycerides, are a type of fat that doesn’t necessarily convert to fat in the body. Instead, MCTs are used as energy, and they’re really good to induce more fat burning. In other words, MCT triglycerides can - somewhat counterintuitively - actually help you lose weight. As calories, they are also typically used right away, and they are very rarely stored a fat.

• It’s rich in lauric acid: Lauric acid is a very powerful anti-viral and anti-microbial type of fat. It helps decrease viruses, it helps your immune system and it’s really good for candida and funguses. So it’s a good thing for your immune system.

• It helps cholesterol: Some studies suggest that coconut oil actually promotes good cholesterol and that it can help improve your cholesterol profiles. One study, in particular, found that coconut oil reduced total LDL cholesterol (or bad cholesterol) and increased HDL (good cholesterol) in a group of 40 women.
   

Almonds

Overall, people on keto should incorporate a wide variety of nuts into their day-to-day diet.

Almonds, in particular, have high concentrations of healthy fats, fiber, vitamin E, and antioxiants. This makes them an ideal nut to consume on this eating plan. Other options?

• Pecans: Pecans are the absolute best nuts to consume because they have the lowest net carbs by far, only 4 g. If you are looking for a real treat, try this recipe for candied pecans (it's sugar-free!).

• Brazil nuts: Brazil nuts are low carb and high fat. They also have a long list of health benefits, not least because they are so high in selenium. Selenium is a trace mineral that is necessary for enzymes, thyroid hormones, mercury detoxification, liver repair, and more. These are great keto nuts to help you stay healthy.

• Walnuts: Walnuts are a common favorite and are one of the really low-carb nuts. They are great chopped and put in salads, or put in healthy keto diet baked goods. They also are a great addition to our spiced nut mix recipe.

• Macadamia nuts: These are even better for keto because they have more fat. The thing about macadamia nuts, though, is that sometimes they go rancid - so you have to make sure that you get them fresh.
   

That said, it’s really easy to over-do nuts and irritate the gallbladder. This is especially true if the nut is raw. Raw nuts have phytic acid, which tends to irritate the gallbladder and cause right shoulder pain.

One trick to avoid this problem? Germinate your nuts. See, there are compounds in nuts that protect the nut from sprouting and turning into a plant. When you germinate nuts, you soak them in water overnight, then rinse them out and dry them (generally in an oven or a dehydrator). This makes the nuts easier to digest because it gets rid of the enzyme inhibitors that tend to fight the body.

Additionally, we recommend that you don’t exceed two to three ounces of nuts in a given meal.

Raspberries

Often known as “nature’s candy,” raspberries are among the highest whole food sources of dietary fiber. Raspberries also contain vitamin C, magnesium, and a variety of other nutrients, such as potassium, vitamin K, calcium, and iron.

Additionally, raspberries boast a wide variety of healthy phytochemical compounds:

• They contain powerful antioxidants and polyphenols, which can help protect against free radical damage and environmental stressors

• They’re high in flavonoids, which are linked to memory improvement and lower risk of cardiovascular disease
   

Coconut Oil and Keto

Coconut oil is really a staple ingredient when it comes to keto with intermittent fasting. Why? It gives you energy, and you can put it in all sorts of recipes for keto bombs (like this one) to help you successfully fast and stick to keto.

So what’s the point here? With the keto diet, you want to have high fat, medium protein, and low carbohydrate diet. Fat is the only nutrient that does not spike Fat Storing Hormone - protein and carbohydrates both do. On top of that, any large meal spikes Fat Storing Hormone as well. The goal, then, is to stop this from happening by eating less frequently and eating high fat.

This will prevent any Fat Storing Hormone spikes and allow your body to start burning fat rather than sugar.

To this end, consuming small snacks with coconut oil - aka keto fat bombs like this one - will help you maintain your keto diet and intermittent fasting without getting too hungry. It will also increase HDL and lower LDL.

Chocolate

Now, what's the deal with the melted chocolate in this recipe? After all, we said that you should avoid semi-sweet chocolate and other sugars and desserts with the keto diet - so what's the deal here? Well, keto chocolate that we melt - like Lily's - is sugar-free and sweetened with Stevia. It's also made with a high percentage of unsweetened cocoa, or dark chocolate, which has lots of antioxidant benefits. It's chocolate - done keto!

Want to try some more dessert recipes? You can check out other keto fat bomb options here.

Up Next:

• Coconut Pecan Fudge Fat Bomb

• Raspberry Chocolate Cheesecake Fat Bomb

• Sugar Free Raspberry Jam
   

Disclaimer: Our educational content is not meant or intended for medical advice or treatment.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated for quality and relevancy.