Date Sweetened Peanut Butter Banana Blondies!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the Veggie Pride Parade but I’m sure it was awesome! I did get to bake these awesome Date Sweetened Peanut Butter Banana Blondies! They have absolutely NO SUGAR only the natural sweetness of the dates, bananas and applesauce! They taste amazing though and I definitely implore you to try them haha. They’re not gluten free but they do contain a small amount of flour for those who aren't gluten free but trying to avoid a lot of white flour. I’m sure you can sub for half whole wheat/regular or even some white whole wheat flour. I also added a tip for a sugar free frosting at the end of the recipe although I just used a thinned out peanut butter for the drizzle on top for the picture.

I really want to embark on a sugar free lifestyle and since I love baking so much, I really want to work with different unrefined sugars to work out which ones I like the best in my baked goods. As long as I can find a good replacement for baking, I’m so okay with leaving behind sugar haha. I love natural occurring sweets like fruit the most anyways.

I hope you enjoy these healthy and delicious blondies!

- Alexis ♥

Date Sweetened Peanut Butter Banana Blondies with a drizzle of Peanut Butter Frosting

• 1 ¼ cup unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 cup dates
• ¾ cup mashed ripe bananas
• ½-¾ cup reserved water from soaking the dates
• ¼ cup natural peanut butter or other nut butter
• ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Rinse and remove the pit from the dates before pouring boiling water just enough to cover the dates and let them soak for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, mash up your bananas until there are no chunks left and set aside.

In a large bowl, sift in your flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and baking soda and then beat in the applesauce, vanilla extract and peanut butter.

Drain the dates, reserving the liquid, and mash them using either the food processor or with a potato masher until completely mashed. I then added about a half a cup of the reserved date juice and mix until it becomes a thin paste. You can add more or less depending on your desired consistency.

Beat in the thinned date paste into the rest of the batter until just combined, do not over mix!

Pour the batter into a greased 8x8 inch baking dish and bake for 40-45 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.

You can top with frosting or leave it as is! Enjoy!

*TIP: If you want to make the peanut butter drizzle/frosting, I literally took about a tablespoon of natural pb and thinned it out with a little bit of unsweetened almond milk until it was like a frosting consistency. If you want to sweeten it up a bit, try using a mashed up date. Soak it like you did for the cake and whisk it together with the peanut butter and almond milk.