Christmas Chocolate Pomegranate Clusters

I call these Christmas Chocolate Pomegranate Clusters, but they are more like Christmas Pomegranate Almond Joys!

After looking at my beautiful Pomegranates that I gleefully bought from the store the other day, I couldn’t decide how I wanted to use them. We all love the precious little beads inside, but I really wanted to use them in an extra special way for the coming holidays and in some form of chocolate.

You can’t go wrong with chocolate….or coconut….or…. almonds!

So I decided to do something similar to Almond Joys, just add the pomegranate to the mix.

I wanted these a little bigger than an almond joy. Thankfully I found some mini-cupcake-liners in the pantry! These will be great for Christmas gifts.

I took 2 cups of shredded coconut and blended it up in the blender until the coconut was fine.

I added 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of sweetened condensed milk (recipe for homemade condensed milk) to the fine coconut. When I made up this batch, I think I added too much sweetened condensed milk. It was a little too runny. The consistency of the coconut/milk should be tacky but not runny.

I then applied the coconut mixture into the bottom of the cupcake liners.

I roasted some almonds in the oven. Keep a hawk eye on your almonds, they can over brown very quickly.

Place one roasted almond in the middle of the coconut mixture.

Open up a pomegranate, using only one half, remove all the seeds. Strain away any access juice. Be sure to drink it up! The juice is so delicious and very healthy! You wont want any extra juice in your cluster, due to making these little chocolates a little too soupy. They need to harden up.

Scoop a spoonful of pomegranate gems onto the top of each cupcake almond and coconut mixture.

Once they are all filled you can begin to melt some semi-sweet chocolate. You can do this in the microwave with 2 cups of chocolate chips and 1 teaspoon of coconut oil . When I use the microwave, I do it for ten seconds at a time, pulling the chocolate out to mix it and then back in again for another ten seconds until all the chocolate is melted and slightly runny.

Scoop and smooth the chocolate over the pomegranates.

Once they are all filled, place the cookie sheet into the freezer so that everything hardens and forms together.

I don’t exactly like eating these when frozen so be sure to pull them out with enough time to thaw out and be enjoyable!

The delicious burst of juice from the pomegranate gems mixed with the chocolate, almonds and coconut are enough to make you swoon!

Enjoy!

Pomegranate Chocolate Clusters

2 Cups of Shredded Coconut

1/2 – 3/4 Cup of Sweetened Condensed Milk

1/2 Cup Roasted Almonds

One Half Portion of a Pomegranate

2 Cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

1 Teaspoon Coconut Oil

Directions

1. In a blender blend the 2 cups of shredded coconut until fine and smooth. Pour into a bowl and add the 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk. Once mixed together make sure the texture is tacky and sticky, but not runny. Fill mini-cupcake liners with the coconut mixture.

2. Roast the almonds in the oven on the broil setting. Never stepping away from the oven. Once the almonds are brown on top, remove from the oven and place 1 (or 2) onto the coconut mixture. About a teaspoon for each, pressed down evenly.

3. Slicing a pomegranate in half, take one of the halves and whack out all the pomegranate seeds. Be sure to strain any excess juice from the seeds. Scoop a teaspoon onto each cupcake cluster evenly.

4. Warm up the chocolate until it is runny and smooth. Distribute evenly over each of the clusters with the melted chocolate.

5. Place the clusters securely into the freezer to form firmly together. Once they are firm you can remove from the freezer and allow time to thaw before eating. Store clusters in a zip-lock plastic bag or plastic container. You can either place them back into the freezer or into the fridge.

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