As was said in previous posts, I always work on the concept of using our local pantry ingredients in making healthy recipes.
For today, I wanted to use a natural sweetener that I can bet that any Arabic housewife has it in her pantry.
Sure, it is not so complicated to just substitute normal sugar with coconut sugar and I am not against it. But let us be real here! How many of us have an easy access to coconut sugar?!
What if you wanted to do a quick sweet bite for your family without pre-planning it?
You will end up doing it with butter and white sugar and regret it later, but don’t worry this is just the perfect easy recipe you need with no complicated ingredients that you can just make quickly for your family.
This what happened with me, I wanted to do something quickly for my husband because he called me craving some chocolate, I opened my pantry and saw those sweet dark dates so I said why not try it!
And it ended up being the moistest, most delicious chocolate bites I ever made. The date combination with chocolate is just perfect, and the natural sweet of those dates is just perfect for any kind of sweets.
Now you can play with this recipe as much as you want, you can add nuts or dried fruits. And for the nut butter I used cashew butter because I just happened to have it, but any kind of nut butter you have on hand is good.
Personally, I tried it with peanut butter and cashew butter and it ended up very tasty and fudgy. Just don’t forget to use organic nut butter with no artificial adding or palm oil…etc.
Those healthy date bites are very easy and perfect for any occasion. With no flour, sugar or oil additive, just a pure sweet date, chocolate combo taste!
Check this quick video above on how to do it easily and for more details on the recipe check it below!
Chocolate dates bites
Serve 12 muffins
Ingredients:
- 1 cup dates , pitted
- ¼ cup of water
- ½ cup of cashew butter
- 1 Tbsp. grounded flaxseed
- 5 Tbsp. cacao powder
- ½ tsp. baking soda
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
- Pinch of salt.
Instructions:
- Preheat oven on 180 C◦.
- In a food processor, combine the dates and water and process until the dates have broken down into a paste. You can add more water to have this paste texture if the ¼ cup wasn’t enough but not more than ½ cup maximum
- Add in the cashew butter, ground flax, cacao powder, baking soda, vanilla, salt and vinegar and process again until a sticky, uniform dough is created.
- The dough will be sticky , that is normal don’t worry
- With an ice-cream scooper, scoop from batter and put into the muffin pan, use around 1 Tbsp. per muffin. Use your fingers or a small spatula to flatten each muffin dough. Because the dough is sticky, I emerge the scooper in iced water to scoop the dough, and same with the spatula, dip it in iced water before flattening each part.
- Bake for around 12 to 15 minutes, until the top look dry. Even if they look a little bit soft in the middle don’t leave it more than 15 minutes in oven, they will firm up when they cool completely.
- Let it cool for at least 30 minutes before removing from muffin tin.
- I noticed the more they cool down the more their taste will pump up and the texture will be more fudgy.
- It can be store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.
- My advice for best result, prepare a big batch, let it cool completely and then store in the fridge for the next day and you will have the best texture and taste!
- Enjoy!