Kitchen Exploits - Chocolate Date Balls

 

Chocolate is one of the favourite things my family likes to eat. We always have chocolate in the fridge, and chocolate desserts often get eaten up the quickest. 

Unfortunately chocolate desserts do require quite a lot of sugar to sweeten them. Cocoa in itself is extremely bitter. I often cut sugar required in recipes, and I found out the hard way once that adding too little sugar to a recipe that includes cocoa can result in very bitter-tasting results.

I first read about the idea of using dates to sweeten a chocolate dessert through an e-newsletter from Little Green Dot. This is a lovely website about Green Living and it shares interesting ideas about Eco-friendly and natural options in Singapore. I subsequently found many other recipes online that use dates in a similar way, and got curious about trying to make some chocolate-dates desserts of my own.

This Chocolate Date Balls recipe is probably one of the easiest, if not the easiest. It requires only three ingredients and a blender. To be honest, I was expecting these little balls to taste like some fake chocolate dessert, something that chocolate lovers would detest. To my delight, these have a rich chocolate flavour, and have passed the "Bubbles' Test". She thinks they are regular chocolate with nuts in them - and views them as a special treat just like any other candy. 

Dates contain an impressive list of nutrients, vitamins, antioxidants and dietary fibre. I feel good when I replace some of the sugar intake of my family with dates instead of processed sugars!

If your family likes chocolate just like mine, you might want to try this!

Chocolate Date Balls

1 cup chopped medjool dates

3T cocoa powder

1/4 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts)

1. Put chopped dates into a blender and blend.

2. Gradually add cocoa powder and continue blending till smooth.

3. Stir in chopped nuts.

4. Form into little balls and eat! (keep uneaten balls in fridge)