Sugar Free Valentine’s Day Chocolates
Valentine’s Day is very different with young children in the house. If you are lucky, they sleep enough and you have enough of a support system where you live to get a babysitter in and have dinner out alone, but often the day is filled with the usual busy-ness, mayhem, hilarious misunderstandings and tantrums that make up our lives as parents. Sadly, young children tend not to know when it is a special day, holidays, or even a weekend!
But it can be really lovely to celebrate Valentine’s Day with our kids. To show them we love them and do activities with them. To have a family day out, a special meal or some creative time all together. In fact, I have included a simple banana chocolate bite recipe below that is a bit more kid-friendly if you want to get making something special together!
And when the day is out and the kids are finally in bed, then it can be nice to share a treat as a couple. But most Valentine’s Day products or recipes contain a huge amount of sugar. For some reason, we have come to believe that days like this are not complete without sugar.
You could turn it completely on its head and make a savoury or non-food treat of course. But if you fancy something sweet and want to avoid the sugar crash, I have just the recipe for you.
It will take you little prep time and effort, tastes luxurious and expensive, and has no sugar in it at all. Well, actually, if you use a low sugar 85% dark chocolate, it has about 0.5g per chocolate. But I hope you will excuse me for calling that sugar free!
I was inspired by All Day I Dream About Food to create some Valentine’s marzipan chocolates. I found Carolyn’s recipe to be far too sweet for my tastes and thought things like rose water and egg white powder were too niche and expensive for us families, so I recreated the recipe to be more to our tastes and budget.
Because the recipe contains raw egg white, it is recommended that you keep these chocolates for over 5s, but I have included a banana chocolate bite recipe for the kids to have their own version if you want to do something for them, too.
And if you are on Sugar Free February? I have another, sugar and sweetener free recipe for you if you are still having fruit. A guilt free treat for a special day.
I hope you have a lovely Valentine’s Day with your loved ones, whether they are spouses or children or parents or friends.
Two types of sugar free Valentine's chocolates: marzipan for adults and banana for children, as well as a yogurt dipped version for those doing Sugar Free February. These treats are surprisingly yummy and perfect for a special day. Adapted from All Day I Dream About Food's marzipan truffles.
- 1 1/2 cups (180g) ground almonds
- 1/2 cup (100g) xylitol (feel free to reduce the sweetener even further - I do!)
- 1 egg white
- 2 tsp Amaretto or almond extract
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 tbsp thawed frozen raspberries optional
- 75 g dark chocolate, at least 85%, although darker is better
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Mix everything except raspberries & chocolate in a food processor to make a dough (add a little extra ground almonds if it's too sticky). Shape into balls/hearts, kneading in raspberries and juice to any you want to dye pink (I did about half). Alternatively, you can just pick out a tiny amount of raspberry and hide it in the middle of the marzipan shape, wrapping the ball around it (it gives a nice "hidden heart" to the chocolate). Freeze on a tray lined with baking paper until hard (1-2 hours).
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Melt the chocolate (it took me around 40 seconds in the microwave) and dip frozen marzipan to cover (use a fork or toothpick to dip). Place back on tray and refrigerate for 10 mins, until chocolate is hard. Keep in the fridge (they will keep for about a week, but I doubt they will last that long!).
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Slice 2 bananas into even slices and freeze them spread out on a baking paper lined tray (this will take at least 1 hour). Once frozen, melt about 50g of dark chocolate (at least 85%) or pour about 50g of plain yogurt (you can make it pink if you like by mashing in some defrosted frozen raspberries) into a bowl (perfect for Sugar Free Feb). Dip the frozen banana slices into the chocolate or yogurt and freeze again (5 mins for chocolate ones, and at least 15 mins for yogurt ones). Eat frozen and store in the freezer for up to a month (although again, seriously, they won't last that long!).
You can use dairy free chocolate or coconut yogurt to make the banana chocolates vegan, if you wish.
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