breakfast+snacks / chocolate / recipes / sweet+desserts
This summer despite the heat and the need for fresh products, one needs to think about energy-packed food for a husband who works really hard in a kitchen for more than 12 hours, and a kid with a tremendous energy who goes to the summer school and needs to take with him an afternoon snack for mid-morning. If we add to this the personal challenge to try to reduce sugars (even if they are little refined) and the use of whole ingredients which are already sweet, the only thing left is to start practicing. I shouldn´t tell you about the indigestion of all my friends and relatives with the thousand versions I have cooked till now. I knew from the beginning that I was going to use banana, dates and peanuts. Thinking about the banana, I realized that the nuts cream should be peanuts cream because they mix really well together, also with the chocolate that was going to be present in the recipe in three different ways: cocoa powder, cocoa nibs to give it a crunchy touch and chocolate coating to decorate the whole thing. The coating would be the only thing with some sugar, but that is something completely optional.
Eventually I got what I wanted and the experience became a genuine cooking workshop for the whole family. However, I must admit that it is not as convenient as the other bars recipe that has been already published in the blog, because they need to be kept in the freezer (during two or three months) or in the fridge for no more than two days. The banana is to be blamed for this. But if you have a cold place to store them until you eat them, they are just as perfect. They taste damn good and it is worth the trouble to have a few of them in the freezer to have them always on hand as a healthy snack, if you don´t have anything else cold around.
As for me, in those mornings when you are in a hurry because your son has woken up just three minutes before you have to get going through the door, I grab them because I know I am giving him something that is going to make him feel full and that is packed with all the energy he needs for the morning.
The recipe can be changed if you keep the same amounts of nuts, banana and dates. You can add whatever seeds you prefer and replace the mashed peanuts with tahini that also goes very well with the banana and the chocolate.
Although it seems that here the burning summer has made a comeback, they are perfect for you to have around healthy food for the whole family at the beginning of the school year.
So, what are you waiting for? give them a go!
Ingredients (makes 22 )
50 grams of cocoa butter or coconut oil
150 grams of oats
50 grams of grated coconut
30 grams of cocoa nibs
30 grams of sunflower seeds
50 grams nuts
1/8 tsp of salt
3 tablespoons of cocoa (15 grams)
11 units of medjol dates
1 medium banana
100 grams of peanut butter (without sugar!)
100 grams of dark chocolate 70%
instructions
- Melt the cocoa butter and chop the walnuts.
- Put together in a bowl the oats, grated coconut, nibs, sunflower seeds and the nuts.
- In a food processor mix together the cocoa, salt, the banana, the dates and the mashed peanuts.
- Mix with your hands the banana mix inside the bowl with the oats.
- Spread it between two sheets of parchment paper with a thickness of 8 mm and freeze it. Also you can stretch it out inside a rectangular mold covered with paper and help yourself with a scraper dampened with water to spread the dough.
- Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie (or in a double boiler).
- When the bars get hard, cut them into rectangles and put them again inside the freezer.
- To cover them with chocolate, you will have to take them outside, put them over a grid and with the help of a fork draw whatever you wish at the top of the bars. Put them again in the freezer and when the chocolate gets hard you will be able to put them inside freezer bags to have them always on hand and grab them whenever you want.
- Enjoy!