Sunday, February 12, 2017

Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter Chews Recipe- Vegan, Refined Sugar Free, Paleo Option


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I love my chocolate. A lot. But I am trying to stay away from white sugar and eat healthier in general. So when I saw someone in a healthy eating group share this recipe for homemade chocolates using date syrup as its sweetener, I knew I had to try it out. But using jaggery syrup, since that is the cheapest non refined sweetener I can get my hands on locally.
Of course, the recipe as is didn't appeal to me, because once I was tweaking a part, I just went a-tweaking and changed pretty much everything in it. I replaced the coconut oil with palm oil (cheaper, and irritates my stomach less), date syrup with jaggery syrup, then decided that it needed peanut butter, because, hello, healthy chocolate and peanut butter? Even more winning combination!
Now that I made these changes, my chocolates don't qualify as Paleo, since peanuts are a legume and forbidden on the paleo diet, but they could just as easily be Paleo if you used nut butter or sunflower seed butter in place of the peanut butter.

These chocolates are not crunchy- they are more chewy (similar to this recipe, but not quite), so when molding these, keep size in mind- you don't want them to be too big to fit into your mouth. Because they're chewy, they last longer than if it were crunchy, since there is a limit to how fast you can eat these. I made about 40 slightly bigger than bite sized chews with this recipe.

Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter Chews Recipe- Vegan, Refined Sugar Free, Paleo Option

Ingredients:
Scant 1/2 cup palm oil or coconut oil
1/2 cup or more (up to two extra tablespoons) liquid sweetener of choice- jaggery syrup, date syrup, maple syrup, honey, etc...
1 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup peanut butter or nut butter or sunflower seed butter
1 teaspoon salt

Instructions:
1. Mix all the ingredients together to get a uniform mixture. Depending on the temperature/season, your oils might be harder and may make it harder to mix them together properly. If you need to, place the mixing container in a large container filled with boiling water to melt the oils enough so they can be mixed in. But try not to melt it too much or it may separate a bit.

2. Once fully mixed, scoop into small chocolate molds.

3. If any oil didn't get mixed in properly and is sitting on top of your chocolates, blot it with a napkin or paper towel, to remove the excess.

4. Freeze until solid.

5. Pop out individually to enjoy. Eat immediately, because it will melt if left out of the freezer for too long.

Enjoy!

Variation: If you don't want any nut or peanut butter in this, just do exactly the same, leaving out the nut butter and you'll still get yummy chocolates.

Are you a fan of chocolate and peanut butter? Have you ever made homemade chocolates, healthy or not? Does this look like a recipe you'd try? Which sweetener would you probably use?

3 comments:

  1. These are delicious, we really enjoyed them...thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Penny. Would like to make these tonight ... can I use canola oil instead of coconut/palm oil?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just to update: I made these with canola oil (a little less than 1/2 a cup), natural peanut butter, and the rest of the ingredients you wrote, and the chocolates came out delicious! Thank you for this great recipe! Definitely a keeper.

    ReplyDelete

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