Peanut Butter Date Bites

If you love peanut butter and chocolate, you will love these nourishing peanut butter date bites. Packed full of wholesome ingredients, you’ll get a sweet fix that is actually good for you! And don’t worry if you can’t have peanuts. You can easily substitute the peanut butter for any other nut or seed butter you love.

Ingredients to make these date bites

For the date “dough”

• Almond flour – you can make your own almond flour. All you need is some whole, unroasted almonds, a pot, and a food processor. If you don’t have time to go through the whole process of making your own almond flour, it can easily be purchased at most grocery stores. Super fine is great, but a little more texture in your date bites never hurt anyone. 😀
• Pitted medjool dates
• Natural peanut butter
• Salt – use unrefined mineral salt. It’s so good for you and tastes amazing. We love Redmond’s Real Salt.
• Vanilla extract – As always, use the real stuff or make your own.
• Water

For the chocolate topping

• Cocoa or cacao powder
• Melted coconut oil
• Maple syrup

How to make peanut butter date bites

First, you’ll need to pit your dates if they are still whole. Slicing them in half like you would an avocado works great.

Place the pitted dates, vanilla, about 1 tbsp of water, and salt into a food processor and blend until smooth. You’ll probably need to pause the blending from time to time to push some of the dates back down where the blades can reach them. Once they are fully blended they’ll look a bit like peanut butter.

The water is to help the dates blend and bring the dough together when we go to add the almond flour and peanut butter. If the dates are not blending well enough add just a tad more water to the processor until they can be blended smoothly.

Add the blended dates to a large mixing bowl along with the almond flour and peanut butter. This dough is quite thick so I find it easier to mix with my hands. If the dough is really crumbly and isn’t holding together well, add more water one teaspoon at a time until you can form it into any shape without it falling apart.

Next is on to shaping.

If you really want to save time, you can turn out this dough into an 8″x8″ casserole dish and fit it to that. You could also make the dough into balls, or you can do as I’ve done here by shaping the dough into something resembling a peanut butter cup.

Take about 2-3tsp of the dough in your hand and shape it into a ball, then press the ball in a lined muffin tin.

Repeat that process until all of the dough is shaped. If you only have one mini muffin tin, you’ll find this recipe makes more date bites than the muffin tin can hold. Simply remove some already shaped peanut butter date bites and add new cupcake liners in it’s space.

We usually make around 30 date bites from this recipe, six more than our 24 count mini muffin tin can hold.

Now to make the chocolate topping.

In a medium sized bowl combine the maple syrup, cocoa powder and melted coconut oil. Stir until fully combined and then add a dollop of chocolate sauce to each date bite.

Finally, chill the peanut butter date bites until the chocolate topping has set. This is really fast in the freezer, about 10-15 minutes, or if you are a little more patient, the fridge will have these chilled in 30-40 minutes.

These will need to be stored in the fridge the keep the chocolate from melting. They make a perfect snack that you and your kids can grab and enjoy as wanted. They are perfect for tiding you over from one meal to the next thanks to the fiber from the dates and the protein from the peanut butter. And for you pregnant mama’s they are a good way to calm a nauseous belly, in my experience anyways. 🙂

If you give these peanut butter date bites a try, let me know what you think in the comments below.

Happy nobake-ing!