As some of you know and many of you don’t, Ray and I do not eat white refined sugar. We haven’t since the early 1980s, with the exception of a few slip-ups on my part a few years back. (Ray never slips when it comes to white sugar, much to his credit.) We eat instead sweets made primarily from honey, molasses, maple sugar, maple syrup and agave syrup.
As you might imagine, it’s not very easy to find actually good sweets made from the above ingredients. They often are only marginally tasty. Hence the reason why I have become a fairly competent baker of sweets using those more natural ingredients. The one exception to the paucity of “good” desserts we could eat came from a bakery here in LA called Mani’s. It was located on Fairfax and they specialized in desserts made with only the sweeteners that were on our list. Needless to say, when we moved here in 1994, we spent A LOT of time at Mani’s, perusing the bakery shelves for goodies.
Unfortunately, Mani’s closed a few years back, probably because it’s so much more expensive to make sweets from natural sources versus white refined sugar. With that closure, we were back to basically home baking for our sweets, and Ray, all of our daughters and I have become quite adept at creating seriously delicious cakes, pies and cookies without even a pinch of sugar. However there was one special cookie that we all loved at Mani’s, a chocolate truffle cookie, which we could never manage to re-create. Actually, it was two cookies with a big glob of creamy chocolate in the middle and we just couldn’t figure out the right combination of ingredients.
This is the long way around to say that today, Rachael, with the aid of a coveted Mani’s cookbook and Ray’s direction, re-created those wonderful chocolate truffle cookies. She also made some with vanilla cream inside, which are a combination of cocoa butter wafers and honey.
This was a big day at our house. These cookies took us right back to those delectable Mani’s visits, when we had a real place we could go visit that offered desserts we could eat.
We all agreed that we have to freeze almost all of these cookies are we’re going to weigh 300 pounds within a matter of weeks. However, to recreate a taste treat that we literally haven’t had in at least ten years was quite an accomplishment. And we continue to be duly impressed with Rachael’s growing baking skills.
Here’s a photo of the cookies made in our kitchen today. Yum.
20 Minutes a Day 
Wow! What a treat to read this! That’s my recipe and my book So glad you found it. How I miss those days Big hugs to you and family
-Mani Niall
I was reminiscing about Mani’s bakery today and found this post while I was searching online if the bakery had reopened.
I used to go to the one on Main Street in Santa Monica, to have coffee with an apple turnover and gingerbread cookie. It was a special treat to me as I don’t eat sugar nor any simple carbs so this was like a sacred ritual, sitting on the sunny patio with beautiful Italian tiled tables. For that brief moment, life was good.
Eventually it closed and the one on Fairfax was too far, I only went there once, then it closed too, so I haven’t had either pastry ever since, but I remember it like it was yesterday.
I did try to make unsweetened apple pies but making the dough right was not easy and I couldn’t find unsweetened premade dough.
Your think that Californians are health-conscious and if we have organic food stores, we would also have plenty of sugar free bakers.
Dear Mani, I’m so happy you found my piece about your bakery, your cookbook, and our recreation of those delectable cookies. Your bakery was a Mecca for us and we still miss it and talk about the desserts we miss. Never have we found anything comparable and kudos to you for offering such healthy and tasty desserts. My husband Ray and I are thrilled to hear from you since you’ve been a hero of ours for a very long time. I still use your cookbook and we miss those days too! Our best to you. Len and Ray.
These are the sandwich cookies I miss so terribly! I used to LOVE these at Mani’s on Fairfax! If you’re telling me the recipe is in the Sweet & Natural cookbook, I’ll buy it today!
The chocolate ones – that recipe – is in the Mani’s cookbook.
manis was my go to for treats! I always got their truffle cookies and strawberry and cream tarts! Wish they would come back, now I’m hungry just dreaming of them!
I miss Mani’s Bakery all the time. Wish they would come back too!