Salted Caramel Pistachio Bites
These pistachio salted caramel no-bake bites are totally delicious and make a perfect sweet treat snack for anyone who loves a chocolate/caramel/nutty combo! So much healthier than Dubai chocolate, but with a similar flavour and lovely nutty crunch. They taste simply divine and are an amazing crowd pleaser – spot the joy in everyone’s faces when they take their first bite!
These bites of goodness are packed with calcium and iron, as well as fibre and omega 3 from the walnuts – these are much more nutritious than any shop-bought alternative!
They are naturally gluten, dairy, soya and egg-free and suitable from aged 3 upwards (due to choking risk). Find a scrumptious nut-free option below in the notes too, so no one misses out.
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Salted Caramel Pistachio Bites
Ingredients
Base
- 50 g Walnuts
- 50 g Almonds (blanched)
- 0.25 tsp Salt
- 6 Medjool Dates (pitted)
- 1.5 tbsp Water
Caramel
- 150 g Medjool Dates (pitted)
- 100 g Almond Butter (unsalted)
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 tbsp Maple Syrup
- 0.25 tsp Salt
- 2 tbsp Water
Topping
- 50 g Pistachios (unsalted & shelled)
- 150 g Dark Chocolate (cooking chocolate)
- 1 tbsp Coconut Oil
Instructions
- Make the base by grinding up the walnuts, almonds and salt in a food processor. Add the dates and pulse until fully chopped. Add the water in a little at a time whilst pulsing until a thick dough forms and it starts to make a ball in the food processor. Mostly you only need 1 tablespoon to do this depending on how sticky your dates are.
- Line a small square cake tin or baking tray with parchment paper and press the base down into it until flat and even.
- Blend all the caramel ingredients together in your food processor until smooth, again adding water in slowly as you go. It should be nice and thick, and you’ll need to scrape down the sides of the food processor bowl regularly.
- Spread the caramel filling over the crust with a palette knife and then top with the pistachios.
- Freeze for a good 4 hours.
- Just before taking the caramel topped base out of the freezer, melt the dark chocolate and coconut oil in a small saucepan, and stir until properly combined.
- Remove base from freezer and cut it into squares. Then roll them in the melted chocolate and pop them back on the lined tray and stick them in the freezer for 15-20 minutes until set.
Notes
- This recipe works really well with other nuts, so try peanuts, pecans or cashews.
- You can also use white or milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate for younger kids.
- Nut free: Swap walnuts for pumpkin seeds and almonds for sunflower seeds, swap almond butter for tahini (sesame paste) and pistachios for goji berries, dried mulberries or dried apricots.
- Dairy and soya-free: choose dairy and soya-free chocolate.
- Store in the freezer for up to 3 months or in the fridge for 3-4 days.
- Delicious eaten straight from the freezer.
As much as this recipe looks very tempting I fail to see how it can be included and deemed “Healthy”
I went through all the ingredients and did a fair calculation of the total net carbs of the list of ingredients – the final total was 160g of net carbs. Naturally this is for the whole tray bake but given how much sugar is in the recipe this kind of so called “healthy” snack will certainly tempt most people to have more than a few squares in one sitting seriously increasing their risk of metabolic disease having ingested dried fruits, chocolate (60 net carbs for 150g) and Maple Syrup (13 net carbs for just 1 tablespoon). These kind of recipes are not educating people about eating a proper human diet, it’s continuing the addiction to sweet sugary snacks but just marketed as “healthy” because it does not contain any so called refined sugars and is not highly processed – BUT does it make it OK to falsely lead people to eat foods which they think are healthy but are covertly contributing to all matter of chronic health issues in the world today?????
Thanks for your comment, but there are several reasons we disagree with your evaluation.
Firstly and most importantly, not all carbs or calories are equal. The danger from sugar is not directly from sugar itself but the glycemic rollercoaster that results from high glycemic index foods. For example, maple syrup has a glycemic index of around 54, which is significantly lower than standard sugar or sugar syrups in ultra processed foods. And it’s not just empty carbs like refined sugar: it has other nutrients such as minerals and antioxidants.
This is one reason why we don’t list the carbs or calories, because these numbers are a very blunt instrument and can be misleading. The recipe overall also has far more protein than shop-bought confectionery.
We take a pragmatic view of food choices. We know that it’s unrealistic to expect kids and grown ups not to be tempted by ultra processed foods with far less nutrition and far more sugar, with higher glycemic index and more propensity for inflammation. Therefore, as the introduction says above, it’s “healthier than Dubai chocolate”, and we believe we get better results with that than preaching so hard at people they ignore us. You repeatedly use the word “healthy” as if we said that about it. We didn’t.
And of course this is just one of hundreds of recipes we have created and tested here to be good enough to compete with UPFs at the family table, but crucially not give such glycemic highs and lows that can be so damaging. Many of our followers (especially amongst the neurodiverse crowd) are having a real struggle with their kids refusing anything except an extremely limited and ultra-processed diet. We provide a resource that allows them to make incremental changes when a giant leap straight to ideal foods is not going to happen.
Most of the other recipes here are not sweet treats, so have a look around… I hope you find something you like!
These were very tasty. I cut them a little smaller than the recipe and one is plenty with a cuppa as they are packed with flavour and filling from the nuts and fibre rich dates. We eat them straight from the freezer and loved them.