This recipe is seriously fast and delicious! If you want a quick dessert that will make a huge impact, this is it. Dark chocolate, almond butter filling – all homemade in about 30 minutes.
Healing, Satisfying Spices = Less Cravings
The surprising spices in this recipe are: ginger and lemongrass. The reason I added these is because they have important properties that help balance out the recipe so that your body and taste buds feel satisfied. For one, ginger helps you digest better. It is one of the top spices for boosting “agni,” your digestive fire. In Ayurveda, agni is the transformative energy of fire and the idea is that if your digestive fire is healthy, your body can transform food into all of the nutrients your body needs.
Cinnamon, of course, makes an appearance because of the gut-healing, inflammation-healing properties it has. Plus, like ginger, it adds that ubiquitous something special to sweet foods.
Lemongrass, the great surprise, was added to balance out the tastes in this recipe. Lemongrass is in the category of spices with a “sour” taste. The good news is, you won’t detect a sour taste in this dessert. Instead, it gives a subtle hint to your taste buds that this recipe is balanced and satisfying. Most of the six tastes are covered in this recipe: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and pungent. When the tastes are balanced, you feel more satisfied, which means less cravings and more soul-fulfilling grounding from your food!
Also, all of these ingredients have healthy properties in their own rights, another reason your body will feel more satisfied and crave less. Hooray!
Time to prepare
This recipe takes about 20 – 30 minutes to make the chocolate outside and almond butter filling, then about 2 hours to chill in the refrigerator. Make the almond butter filling first, then the chocolate.
Serves: 6 – 8 people
Almond Butter Filling Ingredients
- 1 cup almond butter
- ¼ cup dates
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp sea salt
- ¼ tsp ground ginger
- ¼ tsp ground lemongrass
Almond Butter Filling Instructions
- Put all ingredients in your food processor or high-speed blender and mix thoroughly.
- Once blended, set aside and make the chocolate.
Chocolate Ingredients
- 1 cup raw cacao butter
- ½ cup raw cacao (I grind the cacao beans into a powder for a very rich taste, but you can use the cacao powder too, if you don’t have beans on hand)
- 2 TBL hot water
- ½ cup medjool dates
Chocolate Instructions
- In a saucepan, heat the cacao butter on the lowest temperature on your stovetop, until melted.
- Put the dates and 2 TBL of hot water into a food processor with the S-blade or high-speed blender and blend up until completely mushy.
- Once the cacao butter is melted, add the raw cacao, keeping the heat on the lowest setting and mix until blended.
- Now add the pureed dates and continue to heat on the lowest setting until all of the ingredients are mixed thoroughly. The mixture may look grainy because of the dates (like teeny tiny grainy bits in the chocolate). That’s OK – it will end up chilling smoothly!
- Remove from heat and allow to cool a bit on your countertop.
Assembling the Chocolate Almond Butter Cups
- Choose your cups – I like using silicone baking cups, but you can use paper muffin cups too. Choose the size you like best, from mini cups to larger cups. For this recipe, I chose larger heart-shaped silicone muffin cups because I wanted to test out whether the recipe could handle a bigger sized dessert. Plus, they’re just darn pretty!
- Fill in some chocolate into the bottom of the cup. I made the bottom layer pretty thick. This is a bit about taste (how thick do you want the chocolate layer around the filling?) and a bit about the chocolate layer being able to hold the filling. You can experiment with different amounts your first time and see what you like best!
- Now add a dollop of filling over the chocolate layer. This also depends on taste. If you like a lot of filling, add a bigger dollop, just be aware that too much could make it challenging for your chocolate to hold everything together. Try a few different options your first time though, because when you chill everything, it gets pretty strong and holds together well.
- Now pour more chocolate over the top until you have completely covered the filling with chocolate.
- Put your muffin cups into the refrigerator and chill for at least 2 hours. The chocolate will harden up and make a nice, smooth cover over your filling. Now you have a wonderful dessert that is much healthier than store bought peanut butter cups!
- Removing them from the muffin cups: I took a butter knife and gently separated the chocolate from the edges of the muffin cups, then popped them out by turning the muffin cups upside down and gently tapping the bottom of the cup. Out popped the perfect chocolate almond butter cups! If you take them out too soon or don’t separate the edges from the cups with a knife, you might get some still sticking to the bottom of the muffin cup. That’s OK! You can stick that piece back into its home and gently press the chocolate and blend it back in.
- Note: because I made the chocolate with cocao butter, some of the butter rose to the top and made a white/yellow layer. This does not detract from the taste. I just turned them over and the white layer was now un-noticeable on the bottom. You can also scrape it off gently with a butter knife if you want.
Serving Suggestions
I like to make these in heart shapes. Serve on its own – yum! You may also want to serve with strawberries or for a decadent dinner party, serve with vanilla ice cream (Homemade non-dairy of course! One option is to use my Vanilla Pumpkin Pie spice ice cream recipe, but leave out the pumpkin pie spices for a straight vanilla flavor.)
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This dor the recipe. Do you have recipes for Día etis
Hi Jenny, You could consider using xylitol or stevia as a sweetener instead and see how you feel.