Because I’ve been getting quite a lot of requests lately for healthy dessert recipes and because I had a pound of organic prunes that needed to be used up, I decided I would develop a gluten free prune cake recipe.
After a string of successful and not so successful prune cake experiments, I had a different, yet satisfactory result: Chocolate Prune Bars. All in all these are basically fudgey prune brownies. Whatever they’re called, I like ’em.
In fact, as I drove home from a lunch in Denver this afternoon, I was thinking about eating one of these little Paleo/primal friendly treats. Prunes or no prunes, a chocolate dessert recipe is a chocolate dessert recipe, and when it’s an easy dessert recipe that tastes good too? Well there’s nothing better than that! I walked in the door grabbed a chocolate prune bar and it was as good as I had recalled.
So here I am sharing it with you all. And don’t be afraid of prunes, they’re just another dried fruit, and are actually the dried version of European plums.
Chocolate Prune Bars
Ingredients
- 1 cup prunes, pitted
- ½ cup apple juice
- 4 large eggs
- ¼ cup coconut oil
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon stevia
- ⅓ cup coconut sugar
- 2 tablespoons cacao powder
- ¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ cup chocolate chips
Instructions
- Place prunes and apple juice in a saucepan over medium heat
- Gently simmer for 10-15 minutes until just a little apple juice remains and prunes are plump
- Meanwhile, pulse eggs, oil, vanilla and stevia in a food processor
- Pulse in coconut sugar, cocoa, salt, and baking soda
- Remove prune mixture from heat and place in food processor, then pulse until combined
- Pulse in chocolate chips (they may melt a bit due to prune mixture)
- Grease an 8 x 8 inch baking dish
- Pour mixture into baking dish
- Bake at 350°F for 20-25 minutes
- Cool and serve
If you want to make this dessert into a chocolate prune cake, bake it up in a , which should work just fine. I tried this in one of my test batches, though can’t recall how long I baked it for so if you do so please leave a comment for all of us with your baking time.
Now, a brief commentary on the ingredients in this recipe. You will notice that rather than agave, I have chosen coconut sugar as the sweetener for this recipe (if you do want to make it with agave, feel free, however I’m not sure how much it would need, or if it would actually work as I haven’t tried it myself). I also used coconut oil (of which I am a huge fan) rather than my staple grapeseed oil (feel free to experiment with your oil of choice).
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Finally, a little bit about prunes, or “dried plums” as they are often now referred to. Prunes are a very tasty and healthy food, full of unique phytonutrient antioxidants, potassium and soluble fiber. So don’t be shy, grab yourself some prunes, or try to hide them in this deliciously chocolatey dessert and fool your children, big and small.
More healthy recipes with prunes:
–Chocolate Prune Truffles
–Fruit Pudding
–Roasted Chicken with Olives and Prunes
What are your feelings when it comes to prunes? Like? Dislike? Or don’t care? Leave a comment below with your prune history.
Andi says
My daughter got into the prunes (and my husband into the chocolate chips) so I had to improvise with this recipe! Since I did not have enough prunes I substituted dried cherries (roughly 1/2 and 1/2 prunes and cherries). They were AMAZING! Fortunately I ended up having enough chocolate chips so that wasn’t a problem. I would just like to say that the consistency of these is like a firm pudding-like brownie. Absolutely fabulous! Thanks Elana!!
Abby says
Holy cow! These are amazing!!! What a treat on a Friday evening. Only problem, I can’t just eat one.
Susan @ GlutenlessDining says
Hello, breakfast! When my colleagues ask me why I am having a brownie for breakfast, I will say “ah-hem.. this is a super-healthy prune bar.” ;)
geisslein says
these looks soooo yummy! I would love to taste one now.
greetings from rainy germany, geisslein
Donna Chernow says
They look great! Gotta try them out soon… Just made a batch of brownies myself:-)
laura west kong says
Yum! I’ve been working on a gluten-free, refined-sugar free, vegan chocolate-prune brownie recently. Think it’s time to whip up another round in the kitchen. Yours looks heavenly!
Kiran @ KiranTarun.com says
Mmmm.. I am just drooling over this simple yet healthy bars. I love the combination of prunes and chocolate. So delish!
J says
This recipe is so good! The texture when cold reminds me a lot of chocolate mousse cake. Yum!
carol says
please help me to find ways to make these things w/out eggs, both my son and I recently found out we have to avoid them, at least for a while. Are there substitutes.
This is so difficult as they have played a MAJOR role in our diets.
regards, Carol
Lisa Stafford says
You can grind flax seeds and add a little water, or you can buy EnerG Egg Replacement which you mix with water to substitute for eggs. Let us know if you try these for this recipe.
Betsy Licker says
I used Ener-G egg replacement with this recipe and the bars did not rise. Gooey and flat. I did not have liquid stevia, but instead used powder. Not sure if this was problem, but I suspect it was the eggs.
sarah says
They are delicious. I Made a few changes because I didn’t have certain ingredients and they came out great. Instead of coconut oil I used grapeseed oil, for the stevia I used agave, and for the coconut sugar I used unrefined cane sugar.