by Karen Swan

I almost needed physical restraints to prevent me eating this caramel straight from the bowl of the food processor.

These are fab for people with nut allergies and can’t make all the raw treat goodies that use peanut butter or almond butter.

I didn’t have enough coconut oil left to make the homemade chocolate, but I did have a few blocks of 70% Lindt choccie in the pantry, so figured that’d do (hard decision you understand!)

I adore this so much, that the next batch I’m going to leave free of chocolate and set them in a brownie tin to make little caramel squares.

It’s a cracker of a caramel recipe!

Ingredients:

13 pitted fresh Medjool dates – softened by soaking for a few minutes in boiling water

2 heaped Tablespoons tahini

2 heaped tablespoons honey (to make vegan, use maple syrup or similar)

1 heaped tablespoon melted coconut oil

pinch salt

1 cup choc chips, 1 and a bit 100g blocks of Lindt 70% cocoa chocolate, carob chips, cacao nibs or one qty of homemade chocolate)

Method:

Blend all the ingredients bar the chocolate in a food processor until smooth and creamy.

The mix will ball first.  Keep going until it smooths out again.

Using hands dampened with hot water, shape the sticky mix into a log shape.

Lay the mix onto a piece of cling wrap and roll to the shape you want.

If you want to skip the chocolate covering, you can roll the mix into balls and leave plain, or roll in toasted sesame seeds.

Freeze for about 2 hours.

Cut into slices about 1cm.

Melt the chocolate or make one batch of the homemade chocolate.

Dip the slices of caramel into the melted chocolate and lay on a baking tray covered in paper.

Return to the fridge to set.

Store in the fridge.

Recipe adapted from here