Just so you know, this post is influenced by a choco-coma, as I am eating endless brownie bites while typing this post. Let me explain how this all came about. I am quasi-obsessed with this health food online store called, Thrive Market. They carry all the packaged health food items you would find in your regular health food store but at discount wholesale prices. Awesome right? Well Thrive also has a blog that offers awesome tips about health and delicious recipes which are usually gluten free, paleo, and/or vegan. These brownies are a slight adaptation from a recent recipe posted on the Thrive blog for Double-Chocolate Brownie Bites. After seeing the recipe in a weekly newsletter, I immediately texted the link to my husband saying "WE HAVE TO TRY THESE!" I mean what's not to love about a brownie recipe that uses nuts instead of flour, dates in place of refined sugar, and two types of chocolate? It's all-in-all just about the best and simplest recipe ever. Find the details, and my small tweaks, to the recipe below.
RECIPE
- 1 flax egg (1 tablespoon ground flax seed + 3 tablespoons water)
- 1 1/2 cup walnuts
- 11 medjool dates
- 2 tablespoons raw cacao
- 2 teaspoon vanilla paste (or vanilla extract)
- 1 teaspoon Himalayan pink salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup dark chocolate
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare an 8x8 Pyrex glass baking dish by lining with parchment. Prepare your flax egg and set aside.
In a food processor fitted with an s-blade add walnuts. Pulse 5 times then add pitted dates and process until well incorporated. Add additional ingredients (minus chocolate) and process until all ingredients are mixed well.
Finely chop your chocolate. I used a dark chocolate baking bar for this. Fold the chopped chocolate into your brownie mixture.
Scrape mixture into your prepared dish then bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and cool complete before slicing. Slice brownies into your preferred size. I choose to go the bite sized route as the Thrive recipe suggested but fill free to slice and dice them however you'd like. Yum and enjoy!