Sugar free chocolate brownies

I managed to persuade some of my colleagues to join me on Sugar Free February, which is a Cancer Research initiative to encourage people to ditch refined sugar for a month. There are some serious sugar and chocolate lovers among my colleagues so (feeling a bit guilty) I thought I’d try to show that living without refined sugar is actually not bad. In fact after tasting these, it’s actually quite good.

I got this recipe from ‘Nosh – Sugar Free and Gluten Free’ by Joy May.

What to use

• 125g butter
• 150g 100% cocoa chocolate
• 150ml maple syrup
• 240g Medjool dates
• 75ml water
• 3 eggs beaten
• 100g self raising flour
• 2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 100g pecan nuts, crushed

How to use it

First get prepared. Turn the oven on to 160C fan, 180C non fan.

Process or chop the pecan nuts into small chunks and set aside.

Next put the dates and water into a food processor and process until they are a smooth paste. Now a word of warning – I couldn’t find Medjool dates so mine were a bit harder – processing harder dates is a bit messy with a small processor like mine. I had to clamp down the lid and hold kitchen paper around it as the processor bounced around spurting water out all over the kitchen. I got there eventually.

Cut up the butter into cubes and break up the chocolate into bits and gently melt. (In a bowl over a pan of hot water.)

When melted, take off the heat and stir in the maple syrup, and the creamed dates, stir together and leave to cool. It doesn’t take long.

Add the beaten eggs to the chocolate mix, stir gently, don’t beat. Then add the flour, cocoa, baking powder and nuts to the mix and fold in.

Grease/line your baking tin, pour in the mix and even it out. Only fill the tin to about 3/4 as the mixture will rise.

Bake for 30 minutes.