My boyfriend is a health conscious human and seeing as it’s just us and the dogs at home, I do need to think carefully before baking a huge batch of something packed full of sugar. Otherwise I will be left with a giant batch of sweet treats that I will be left to eat (poor me…) or the freezer end up full of cake! (Quel dommage, I hear you cry out!)
Scroll down to the ingredients for the start of the recipe or stick with me for how I got to the delicious treat you see before you!
Anyway, with this in mind I decided to develop a recipe for a sweet treat but banned myself from using actual sugar of any variety. That’s right, not even coconut sugar! As I was racking my brains and raking through the cupboard I remembered that they often add dates to their morning porridge. We have a lovely corner shop nearby that stocks lots of fruit and veg as well as dried goods and the guy there had a stack of great big boxes of dates – lucky really as it took quite a few attempts to get this right.
I have gone for the softer version of this recipe. Quite a few of the earlier iterations of this bake contained tapioca starch, I thought this would help give them a chewy texture but they ended up being gummier than I liked. In the end I went for a mixture of oats, buckwheat flour and rice flour. With a bit of help from some baking powder, they end up being lovely and moist – they are on the cakier side of cookies but for any fellow gluten-free, vegans out there, what’s in a name?! I don’t care what it’s called if it’s tasty.
Ingredients
- 80g oats
- 40g buckwheat flour
- 25g rice flour
- 4g xantham gum (1 tsp)
- 6g baking powder (1 tsp)
- 3g cinnamon (1 tsp)
- 35g raisins
- 60g butter (melted, spreadable is fine for this recipe)
- 170g medjool dates (about 12 of them, squeeze the stones out!)
- boiled water
First things first, set your oven to 180°c to preheat and line a couple of baking trays with baking paper. Then pop all your dates in a small bowl and pour boiling water over them. You want your dates to be just covered with hot water, set them to one side to cool and follow the next steps. We will come back to them later. It’s also a good idea to melt your butter now, to give it a chance to cool a little. I just measure mine into a mug and microwave it, 30 seconds usually does the trick.
While your dates are soaking, get all of your dry ingredients weighed out and add them to a mixing bowl. Give it a good stir and try and get the raisins even distributed through the mixture and coated with some of the flour, it will help them end up evenly spread throughout the dough.
I have given weights as well as teaspoons so that the speedy ones can plough on ahead with their scoops. I think, especially when you’re baking with non-traditional ingredients, using weights allows you to be more accurate and eliminates the possibility of anything else going awry during your bake. But you do you, boo.
If you bake them and decide to change the spices let me know, I think these might benefit from a bit more cinnamon or even some nutmeg if that is your jam.
Okay, back to the dates. Be careful here, the official line from SnackalinaEATS is wait until the water has cooled to tepid. If you can’t stick your finger in it, it’s too hot for the blender. Don’t stick your finger in it while it’s still boiling though! Wow, what a nightmare.
When your dates are cool, spoon them into the blender with some of the water they soaked in. Set your blender to work, be extra careful if you have a leaky blender, maybe wrap the top with a tea towel so that hot, date paste doesn’t splatter across the whole kitchen. Once they are starting to break down, add some more water a little at a time until you have used up about 2/3 – 3/4 of the soaking water. You are looking for a smooth, shiny date paste.
Next you’re going to add your butter to the blender, it shouldn’t be scalding hot because you melted it earlier. It only needs to be melted enough to pour anyway. Once the butter is in, fix the lid back on and blitz into a smooth paste.
Once your butter and date paste are blended together you are going to pour them into the dry mixture. Use a spatula to scrape as much of that sweetness out as you can. As with all vegan, gluten-free baking, you need to move quickly now. The raising agent (baking powder) will get to work straight away and without gluten or other proteins to catch the bubbles we want to get it in the oven ASAP to lock in the air. Mix it together with a spatula (it won’t take long) until the dry mixture is fully incorporated.
Then, using a couple of dessert spoons, scoop dollops onto your baking trays and squish flat. I made a baker’s dozen with this mixture, a lovely, round thirteen cookies.
Mine baked for 16 minutes in the oven at 180°c, keep an eye on them, you want them to darken but the raisins sticking out of the mix will burn if they are left in too long.
And that really is it. Hopefully you’re getting the vibe that I like straightforward, fuss-free recipes. I will get round to posting some more extravagant recipes but often times, when you want a sweet snack, you just want something easy and quick.
Let me know how you get on with this recipe, as usual I would love to see what you’re up to over on Instagram.
Snackalina out. x
SnackalinaEATS 