Snack

Anna Jones's Raw Brownies recipe

Name: Anna Jones's Raw Brownies
Prep time: 15 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 16
Ingredients: 100g almonds, skin-on; 250g pitted dates; 2 tbsp honey; 75g cocoa powder (the kind without sugar); ½ tsp fine salt; 30g pecans, chopped; 50g dark chocolate, chopped; A food processor

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Chocolately squares made with dates, cocoa, pecans and dark chocolate. No need to bake, just add the ingredients to a food processor, shape, refrigerate and they're done.

Prep15m
Stand15m
Total30m

anna-jones vegan-adaptable vegetarian

Raw chocolate squares with pecans and dark chocolate pieces

I think of these more as "chocolate squares" than "brownies" but name aside, they are ridiculously rich and moreish. To me, brownies are gooey and made with flour whereas these are more chewy and dense as they're made from dates. I love them and they go brilliantly with a cup of tea.

I’ve made a few tweaks to the original recipe:

Anna Jones uses a 20cm cake tin to shape the dough and she cuts it into 20 pieces. I don’t bother with the cake tin; instead I shape the dough into a square with my hands then I cut it into 16 pieces. The dough measures roughly 16cm x 16cm x 2.5cm before it's cut.
I use fewer pecans and I add some chopped dark chocolate.
I use regular pitted dates rather than Medjool as they’re cheaper and I can’t really tell the difference once they’ve been mixed with the other ingredients.
The original recipe specifies raw honey and raw cacao but I use normal honey and cocoa powder.

There’s no baking involved but you will need a food processor. I use my Magimix Le Mini Plus, which can just about cope with the ingredients but a full-sized food processor would combine the ingredients more efficiently.

Notes

To make these chocolate squares vegan, use maple syrup instead of honey and check that your dark chocolate is vegan.

Recipe credit

A Modern Way to Eat by Anna Jones.

Recipe

Anna Jones's Raw Brownies

Prep15m
Stand15m
Total30m

Serves: 16

Ingredients

Raw brownies

100g almonds, skin-on
250g pitted dates
2 tbsp honey
75g cocoa powder (the kind without sugar)
½ tsp fine salt
30g pecans, chopped
50g dark chocolate, chopped

You will need

A food processor

Method

Add 100g of skin-on almonds to a food processor and blitz until the almonds break up into small pieces.
Roughly chop 250g of pitted dates to check for any hidden stones then add them to the food processor along with 2 tablespoons of honey, 75g of cocoa powder and ½ teaspoon of fine salt.
Process until the ingredients combine into a dough. In my small food processor this takes around 5 minutes - first the ingredients break down into a wet sand-like mixture then eventually they start to clump together.
Tip the dough onto a chopping board. If it’s warm, let it cool, otherwise the chocolate pieces will melt when you incorporate them. Press 30g of chopped pecans and 50g of chopped dark chocolate pieces into the dough then shape it into a 16cm square (roughly 2.5cm tall). I repeatedly fold and flip the dough, banging the edges against the chopping board to make a square shape.
Put the square onto a plate and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Remove from the fridge and cut into 16 pieces. Store in an airtight tin for up to a week or the fridge if the weather is warm.