These Dates, Pecans and Coffee Bliss Balls are smooth in texture and offer a much more defined flavour… an ideal chocolate replacement but much healthier and not as sweet.

The coffee flavour really comes through so if you are a coffee lover they might be perfect for you.

Oh and you can also consume them much quicker than my earlier Nut, Seeds & Fruit Bliss Balls as the texture isn’t as coarse and so they do not require as much chewing 🙂

Ingredients:

• 100g dates
• 150g pecans
• 75g ground almonds (+ some more for rolling)
• 1tsp vanilla essence
• 1tbsp cocoa powder (flat)
• 1tbsp raw honey (heaped)
• 50ml good quality very strong espresso coffee

Method:

De-stone your dates and put them into soak. This time instead of water, soak them in some good quality very strong coffee, 30 minutes to 1 hour should do the trick.

Once their time is up, drain the excess liquid off but do not squeeze the dates dry; you want them moist, so let them retain all of their liquid. Roughly chop them up and set aside.

Place the pecans in a food processor and pulse mix until they are fairly powdery and there isn’t any big chunks left.

Add the ground almonds, honey, cocoa powder, vanilla essence and chopped dates and blitz until you have a smooth mixture.

The final texture of your mixture will depend on how moist your dates were. If the mixture, doesn’t stick add a little bit more honey or a spoonful of coffee; if your mixture is too wet, add some more ground almonds.

Now, it is time to form some balls. Scoop a small amount into your palm and form a small mouth sized ball… repeat until all the mixture is gone.

Finally roll your balls in some ground almond. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. they will look more appealing
2. they will be less sticky

Keep in the refrigerator and enjoy at your own leisure.

Testing new #blissballs – this time dates, walnuts and coffee flavour. Yumm! #food #foodie #healthychoices #healthyliving #healthylifestyle #f52grams #foodgawker #foodporn #edgeofbelgravia #precisionknives

A photo posted by Agata @BarkTime (@hunhun007) on Oct 8, 2015 at 1:13pm PDT

I’ve shared these bliss balls on Instagram a few days ago (yes, they supposed to be walnuts but when it came to making it again, I’ve run out of walnuts) and I was told they look like rum truffles… well this got me to thinking… can I make rum truffle style bliss balls? I haven’t tried it yet but they are on my To Do list and if they work, you will hear about them soon.

Do you have any favourite flavours you would like to see inside a bliss ball?