This recipe is an ideal hot weather treat that is perfect for placating your sweet tooth when you are on a bit of a health kick. Don’t get me wrong, these brownies aren’t diet food. They are, however, made out of nutrient-dense ingredients such as almonds, pumpkin seeds, raw cacao powder and naturally sweet dates and are healthy, unless you ‘inhale’ an entire tray in one sitting. At the bottom there is a rich chocolate layer and at the top is an indulgent salty caramel made out of dates – it’s this property of turning into a sweet caramel-like substance that has earned dates the nickname of nature’s caramel. These puppies require no baking and I’m pretty sure you could put them together with your eyes closed. As an added bonus, they taste great straight from the freezer on a hot day.
I’ve been meaning to make them for a while, but Duncan has been a bit unconvinced about them to begin with. He doesn’t think they deserve to be called ‘brownies’ as they do not resemble the decadently chocolatey gooey in the middle cake that all chocoholics go crazy about. Given his scepticism, I was therefore very surprised that when I opened the freezer I found considerably fewer brownies left than I remembered putting in. Predictably, our cat gets the blame (Duncan: ‘it was definitely cat’).
