Three Ingredient Date and Coconut Bites

There are an awful lot of new ‘healthy’ or ‘superfoods’ around at the moment and they are everywhere you look. Avocados, coconut oil, seeds and berries, cacao nibs; the list goes on. Now, I’ll try anything once and I have had a flirtation with all of the aforementioned foods but what happens when the Vogue moment is over, everyone’s moved on to something new and you’re left with a cupboard of half opened ingredients. Well if you’re me and throwing it away is not an option (although the compost bin might actually be the best place for the cacao nibs) you get creative. Welcome to my Three Ingredient Date and Coconut Bites; ready in a flash, use up some ingredients and made with all the good stuff.

You will need (for 16 bites):

• 12 medjool dates (these are the extra sticky ones)
• 2 tbsp coconut oil
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Pit the dates if they have stones and roughly dice them up. Put them in a food processor and blend to a rough paste.

Add the coconut oil and vanilla then blend again until smooth.

Roll into balls then pop in the fridge for when you fancy one.

The eagle eyed among you will have noticed that my date and coconut bites are coated in desiccated coconut. You can coat them if you like but they are fine naked too. I have tried desiccated coconut, cocoa powder and sesame seeds all with much success.

There’s not a lot to these little bites in the quantity of ingredients or difficulty in making but they certainly pack a punch when it comes to flavour. I didn’t expect these to be quite as nice as they are; a great hit of sweetness but from all natural sugar. When you’re having your afternoon coffee, pop a couple of these on the side. You can thank me later. The dates are sticky and sweet, the coconut oil improves the texture and the overall flavour is faintly vanilla with a good dose of coconut. I’m really rather pleased with these.

A little comment on ‘superfoods’ if I may. I think it’s interesting that all these new ingredients (or old in some cases, amaranth I’m looking at you) have their 15 minutes of fame but when the fad is over, we all move onto something else and it’s a never ending process. It’s great that we can all get hold of these ingredients to try for ourselves and the range of ingredients available now, even in a petrol station, is quite staggering. What I’m not so keen on is that some of these ingredients are sold as hugely superior to other foods to justify the price. There is not one food that does everything, and if there was, I certainly wouldn’t be interested in eating just one thing for the rest of my life no matter how ‘good’ it was for me. Certainly some of these ‘superfoods’ have benefits but you’re not going to get away with eating a generally bad diet just as long as you chuck a few chia seeds in on the way. It’s an old saying, but it’s the best one: everything in moderation, including moderation. Have a bit of cake, order extra cheese on your burger, try new ingredients, give salad a go. As far as I’m concerned if you’re cooking food up at home from ingredients that you like, what’s not super about that?