RECIPE: Healthy no-bake peanut butter chocolate circles

Oh sweet Lord in heaven above. Please excuse my blasphemy, but THESE!

I’m serious, they are brilliant beyond brilliant, as immodest as that sounds.

Words cannot express how much I love them.

I think I may have died and gone to chocolate peanut butter heaven.

As a chocolate-peanut butter fan – nay, fiend – I can wholeheartedly say these are the best sweet treat I’ve made in a loooooong time. And I’ve been making some pretty good stuff, if I do say so myself.

And so it pleases me ever-so-greatly that these little babies are genuinely good for you. Yes, eating these DOES YOU GOOD! Crazy.

They’re essentially just fruit, peanuts and cacao, but turned into something incredibly indulgent-tasting.

Oh yes, these babies are:

• Squidgy
• Sweet
• Rich
• Salty
• Chewy
• Flavoursome

Both layers are delightfully soft, but the textures are different: the top is velvety smooth and just melts on the tongue, whereas the bottom is gooey and slightly squidgier. Both are bursting with chocolate peanut butter flavour, insanely delicious and they complement each other so incredibly well.

Even my friend Frankie who doesn’t really like peanut butter *gasp* (I know, pretty good of me to remain friends with her, right?) liked these.

And I was just sitting there attempting to maintain conversation and not show on my face the result of the foodgasm that was taking place in my mouth.

I wanted to call them chocolate peanut butter cups, but the trouble is that peanut butter cups are kind of already an established thing. Annoying. They’re not bars, they’re not cakes… I’ve gone with circles. Here’s hoping it catches on.

It literally blows my mind that something so insanely delicious can be so incredibly healthy. Seriously. It’s like some kind of trick.

And oh my days, is this simple. Just a few ingredients and a few steps.

For a long time, I’ve been finding amazing-looking healthy recipes and got really excited about them, only to discover you need a food processor to make them. Despite having pretty much every other kitchen gadget in existence (sorry, flatmates), a food processor is something I lack. They’re pricey, ma friends!

However, I’ve recently made a purchase that may solve all my problems. OK, maybe not aaalll of them – it’s probably not going to make me fluent in German, but still.

Enter, Kenwood CH180 Mini Chopper. At just £15, I couldn’t resist getting myself one of these – it’s essentially a teeny weeny food processor, and is perfect for this recipe.

It’s also super easy to use. And if you have a dishwasher you can just pop the parts in there afterwards. If you’re an impoverished student like moi who has to wash everything up by hand, do be careful and don’t slice your thumb open on the blade like I did.

The quantities below don’t make a lot, but that’s because medjool dates, like food processors, are expensive. Feel free to increase the quantities though. I only dream of the day when I can throw medjool dates into a proper-sized food processor with abandon. That’s when I’ll know I’ve made it in life.

Ingredient notes

Make sure you use all-natural peanut butter, ie the stuff that is 100% nuts without any added nasties (usually sugar and palm oil.) I like Meridian.

I know cacao is a little harder to track down than cocoa powder, but I found some in my local health food store and it’s soooo worth it. Raw cacao is basically the unprocessed version of cocoa, so has a million and one more health benefits. To make it, the cocoa beans are simply crushed.

Cacao is so powerful that you only need a little bit and it’s full of goodness to nourish you from the inside out. Deliciously Ella just published a great post all about the benefits of raw cacao so do have a read.

For the peanut butter chocolate topping you want to use really good quality dark chocolate if you can.

You really do need to use medjool dates too – they’re bigger, stickier, sweeter and more flavoursome than regular dates, and they give these little circles their amazing texture.

Sweet Freedom is 100% from fruit and is thus all natural, but you could also use honey or agave instead.


This recipe makes six.

Ingredients – Base:

6 medjool dates, pitted
1 heaped tbsp all-natural peanut butter (I used crunchy but smooth is fine)
1 level tbsp. raw cacao powder
1 squeeze Sweet Freedom

Topping:

50g dark chocolate
1 tbsp smooth all-natural peanut butter

Method

1. Line a muffin tray with six cupcake cases. Cut the dates in half and pop them in a food processor. Pulse until chopped/mushed, stopping to break up the mix and scrape down the sides every so often. Add the peanut butter and cacao and pulse some more.

2. Once it all gets a bit stuck, transfer to a bowl and add the Sweet Freedom to ease mixing – stir well with a spoon until well combined. This requires a little bit of work as the dough will be stiff and sticky. (It’ll also be ludicrously tasty but try and resist eating too much!)

3. Drop small spoonfuls into the cupcake cases and press down well with your fingers, pushing it to the sides and making sure each one is even. Pop into the fridge while you make your topping.

4. Carefully melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water (making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water). Once melted, stir in the peanut butter – try hard to resist eating this too.

5. Remove the tray from the fridge and pour of the topping onto each base, carefully spreading it to the edges. Pop the tray back in the fridge to set and that’s it!

Enjoy the health-giving goodness with your loved ones… if you’re generous enough to share! (I don’t judge you if you keep them for yourself, they’re that tasty. But do keep any leftovers in the fridge.)