Easy Chocolate Date Bark
This easy chocolate date bark is a delicious dessert or snack that can be made in minutes. While similar to my chocolate covered dates recipe, it’s a great alternative for those with little patience for fiddly tasks. Instead of stuffing dates individually this is simply made all on one tray.
What Is The Benefit Of Eating Dates?
I’ve mentioned the many wonderful health benefits of dates before. However, if you need a refresher, they’re rich in minerals such as iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and zinc as well as being full of fibre. Additionally, they also contain plenty of vitamins like A and K as well as several B vitamins. Lots of reasons to include them in your diet regularly.
Dates make a wonderful dessert or snack on their own. Although given they’re so sweet, combining dates with a protein like nuts and/or nut butter helps delay their digestion and aids in controlling blood sugar levels.
Ingredients Needed For This Recipe
This recipe uses very basic pantry staples. And if they’re not already in yours they’re easy to find. Aside from the dates, which form the base of the recipe, most other ingredients can be changed to suit your tastes. Use any nut butter or nuts preferred and it’s your choice of milk or dark chocolate too.
- Dates – The glue that holds this deliciousness together. They also make the bark chewy and deliver hints of caramel with every bite.
- Nut butter – any you choose will be fine. I went with peanut butter because it’s what I had on hand.
- Nuts – peanuts or cashews are great, they give this a snickers feel. Again though, anything you have is fine.
- Chocolate – Go with your preference here, milk or dark.
- Coconut oil – This is used to make the chocolate easier to spread once melted. It adds a nice hint of coconut flavour too.
- Salt – Helps to cut through the sweetness of the dates and chocolate.
- Desiccated coconut – This is optional but adds a touch of colour and flavour when sprinkled over the top.
Let your creativity guide you with this recipe. You can mix milk and dark chocolates, add coconut flakes or even more chopped nuts on top. If you do add any other toppings, be sure to add them straight after pouring over the chocolate. This will ensure they stick to it before it’s frozen. And if you need to make a dairy free version, just replace the chocolate with your dairy-free variety of choice.
How To Make This Easy Chocolate Date Bark
This recipe needs 10 minutes or less hands on time. Perfect for those days you’d like a sweet treat with little effort. The trickiest part is flattening out the dates because they can get quite sticky. A tip to help with this if needed is to lay a piece of baking / parchment paper over the top before pressing them down.
- Line a baking sheet with baking / parchment paper.
- Remove seeds from the dates, open them right up and lay them out on the baking tray slightly overlapping with the cut side up.
- Press the dates down so that they slightly stick together as one large piece.
- Pour the peanut butter over the dates and spread it out to the edges. Next, sprinkle the chopped peanuts over the top.
- Melt the chocolate and coconut oil together in a double boiler on the stove or in the microwave. Once runny, pour this over the top of the chopped nuts and gently spread it out to the edges of all the dates.
- Sprinkle over the desiccated coconut if using, followed by the salt and put the tray in the freezer for 30 minutes to an hour to firm up.
- Remove the chocolate date bark from the freezer and chop it into chunks. It’s quite sweet, so I cut mine into 20 or so pieces.
- Serve straight away and keep any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge.
If the chocolate is still too thick to pour after it’s been melted, add another 1 – 2 teaspoons of coconut oil to help thin it out. It needs to be a pourable consistency, so the dates aren’t pulled apart as the chocolate is spread.
FAQ
This will last for many weeks in the fridge, but it will all be eaten before that!
Medjool are the best variety for this recipe because they’re large and have a creamy texture. As such, I don’t recommend swapping them for another kind.
Watch How To Make This Recipe
Easy Chocolate Date Bark
Ingredients
- 350 g pitted medjool dates (~12 oz or 17 dates)
- 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter (see note 1)
- 1/3 cup peanuts, roughly chopped (see note 2)
- 1.5 cups chocolate buds or chips (milk or dark, whichever you prefer)
- 2 tsp coconut oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 – 2 Tbsp desiccated coconut (optional)
Instructions
- Line a baking sheet with baking / parchment paper.
- Remove seeds from the dates, open them right up and lay them out on the baking tray slightly overlapping with the cut side up.
- Press the dates down so that they slightly stick together as one large piece. There should be very few spaces visible between them.
- Pour the peanut butter over the dates and spread it out to the edges.
- Next, sprinkle the chopped peanuts over the peanut butter.
- Melt the chocolate and coconut oil together in a double boiler on the stove, or in the microwave. Once runny, pour this over the top of the chopped nuts and gently spread it out to the edges of all the dates.
- Sprinkle over the desiccated coconut if using, followed by the salt and put the tray in the freezer for 30 minutes to an hour to firm up.
- Remove the chocolate date bark from the freezer and chop it into chunks. It's quite sweet so I cut mine into 20 or so pieces.
- Serve straight away and keep any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge.
Notes
Nutrition
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