“Clean” Almond Joy Bites

A prego friend of mine was talking about her pregnancy cravings a while back. She was saying how she wanted to eat less processed sugar, however she had been craving Almond Joys. She told me that she had made a “paleo version” she found online but that just didn’t satisfy her sweet tooth. So I was inspired to make my own “clean” almond joy type candies. My friend has since had her baby (yes, I have been working on this recipe for some time now), but I brought her my finished recipe this week and she liked them! She asked if I would be posting the recipe. I told her it depended on if she liked them or not. So, since they got the thumbs up… here is the recipe!

Ingredients:

Filling:

• 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
• 3/4 cup coconut butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (no corn syrup added)
• 10 modjool dates
• 1/4 cup almond butter (all natural store bought or homemade)
• pinch of salt. We buy our Redmonds Real Sea Salt at Thrive Market.
• 12 salted almonds

Chocolate Outside:

• 1 ounce unsweetened bakers chocolate
• 1/2 cup coconut butter
• dash vanilla extract (no corn syrup added)
• liquid stevia to taste (OR grade B maple syrup to taste-when I use maple syrup, I use a couple tsp but you can add as much as you like)
• pinch of salt. We buy our Redmonds Real Sea Salt at Thrive Market.

I have made these a couple of different ways. You could either put the filling into silicon candy molds or you can put the filling in a Pyrex bread pan to make “bars”. I’ve made them both ways.

Here are the hearts.

Hearts out of the silicon mold that I bought on amazon.

You can then either coat the bars or candies in chocolate or drizzle it over the top. It’s up to you. The chocolate I make is quite dark and some (i.e. my husband) find it to be a little bitter. However, if you were to add more maple syrup (or honey) to the chocolate you can make your chocolate sweeter. It all depends on your taste/preference.

Here’s how I made them:

Directions:

1. First put your unsweetened shredded coconut in the food processor and blend.

2. While blending the coconut use a small pan to melt your coconut cream concentrate. I use these brands of cream of coconut. I used the one on the right for the “filling”. It’s exactly 3/4 cup so it worked perfect. And I think it’s a little sweeter than the tropical traditions brand (in my opinion). I used the tropical tradition brand for my chocolate drizzle.

3. Add the melted coconut cream concentrate to the coconut in the food processor.

4. Add the almond butter, vanilla extract, and pinch of salt and blend thoroughly.

5. Add pitted medjool date one at a time till blended completely.

6. You can then place the filling into the candy molds OR put the filling into a Pyrex Bread pan.

7. If using candy molds you can place a salted almond into the center of each of the candies. If using the bread pan you can press the almonds into the top of the filling.

Here are the ‘bars’.

8. Then let the filling “set” in the freezer for 30 min to an hour.

9. Take the bars out of the freezer and cut them into 12 equally sized pieces. If using the candies, pop them out of the silicon mold and place them onto parchment paper.

Chocolate Coating:

1. In a double boiler melt the unsweetened chocolate, coconut cream concentrate, vanilla extract, and sweetener of choice and a dash of salt. If you don’t have a double boiler you can just put a stainless steel bowl in a pot filled with water like I did here.

2. You can then dip each candy in the chocolate to coat it and set it on the parchment paper to dry. OR you can drip chocolate over the bars on parchment paper.

3. Set the finished almond joys in the refrigerator to cool.

I coated some of the bars with chocolate and dripped chocolate on others. If you want to coat all the bars you are going to want to double the chocolate coating recipe.

Mine didn’t turn out very “pretty”. I’m sure you can do better. But hey, they taste good.

Here are a couple finished “bars”. You can use a larger (9×9) Pyrex pan too if you would like thinner bars like in the first photo at the beginning of this post.

You can store these in the fridge for a few days or the freezer for a couple months.

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