Raw Date And Orange Holiday Truffles

Raw Date And Orange Holiday Truffles – the perfect sweet treat to give as a holiday present. Easy to make, they are naturally sweetened with dates, loaded with fiber from the hazelnuts, sweet-tart flavor from the cranberries, fresh and light citrusy orange taste and rich chocolate flavor from the cacao powder. These truffles are healthy, low fat and sinfully delicious!

Hi everyone! Happy Monday!

With just 3 days away from Thanksgiving, I’m really excited to start getting ready for Christmas! It is my number one favorite holiday and I’m very excited to start Christmas shopping and of course Christmas cooking.

Every year around the holidays, I kind of get in a “diet mood” and try to eat healthy, light foods for at least a week before they start. I know that I will not be able to keep myself away from all the good stuff on Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I try to loose a few pounds before that. It works well for me and after all I don’t feel guilty for eating too much Pumpkin Roll  or cupcakes.

You know I love baking sweet treats, but today’s recipe is really simple, absolutely no baking involved. These raw date and orange holiday truffles are soft, rich and have slight orange flavor. I decided to call them “holiday” truffles, since for some reason I associate orange flavor with Christmas.

These truffles take only 15 minutes to make, but need to be chilled for at least 15 more, because dough is a little sticky. You only need 6 ingredients and a food processor. If for some reason you don’t have a food processor handy, you can try to finely chop the nuts and mash dates with a fork and you’ll still be able to make good truffles, just remember that the texture will not be very smooth.

The inspiration or this recipe came after I saw a Raw Chocolate Orange Bars recipe on Helen’s Blog Scrummy Lane. Her 5 Ingredient Raw Chocolate Orange Bars looked awesome, healthy and easy to make and I decided to give them a try. I knew from the beginning, that I was making truffles, not bars, because I just like the idea of small bites. Of course I adjusted the recipe to my taste and I’m really happy with the results. I guess you can’t go wrong with the chocolate- orange combination.

I wanted to make these raw chocolate orange truffles with cashews, but when I was getting ready to start making them, I realized I was out of raw cashews. Of course I had raw hazelnuts at home. I always have some in my pantry, since I’m from Europe (originally) and hazelnuts are very popular there, and more important they are my favorite nuts! And after replacing cashews in this recipe with hazelnuts, then I made one more adjustment. Since these are holiday, “Christmas” truffles, I used dried cranberries in them. The cranberries I used are sweetened with fruit juice, and did not make my truffles overly sweet, which was perfect!

After you make the dough for your truffles, I recommend using a small cookie scoop (or even a measuring tablespoon) to scoop out  truffles with the same size. Then you roll them into balls and chill them for at least 15 minutes.

These raw date and orange holiday truffles taste pretty good on their own, but if you’d like to bring them to a holiday party or even wrap them up and give them as a Christmas present, I recommend that you decorate them. I rolled some of mine in cacao powder and some in Christmas sprinkles, to give them the desired holiday look.

I hope you enjoy them as much as my family did!

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4.86 from 7 votes

Raw Date And Orange Holiday Truffles

By Lyubomira from CookingLSL

Raw Date And Orange Holiday Truffles – healthy, gluten free and delicious! Perfect to wrap as a gift for Christmas!

Prep: 15 minutes mins

Total: 15 minutes mins

Servings: 12

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Ingredients 

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• ▢ 1 medium orange zested and juiced
• ▢ 12 medium Medjool dates pits removed
• ▢ 2 oz (57 gr) dried cranberries
• ▢ 5 oz (142 gr) raw hazelnuts (or any raw nuts of your choice)
• ▢ 1 oz (25 gr) raw cacao powder
• ▢ 1 tsp coconut oil melted
• ▢ optional- 1/2 tsp orange liqueur of your choice

Decoration:

• ▢ any holiday cookie sprinkles of your choice and cacao powder

Instructions 

• Line a plate or baking sheet with parchment paper.
• In a medium bowl combine dates, cranberries and half of the orange juice. Let them soak for 10-15 minutes.
• In a food processor (powerful blender) combine hazelnuts and the rest of the orange juice and process until nuts are finely chopped.
• Transfer chopped hazelnuts to a bowl.
• Process soaked dates, cranberries and orange juice for 1 minute.
• Combine date-cranberry mixture with hazelnut mixture. Add cacao powder, coconut oil, orange zest and liqueur (optional). Mash everything together until a homogenous mixture is formed.
• Using a small cookie scoop, scoop out balls from the dough, then roll them by hand and place on prepared baking sheet (plate) lined with parchment paper. Chill for 15 minutes.
• Take out of the fridge and roll truffles in toppings of your choice. (I used cacao powder and Christmas sprinkles).
• Keep truffles in an air tight container, refrigerated.

Nutrition

Calories: 156kcal, Carbohydrates: 23g, Protein: 2g, Fat: 7g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Potassium: 307mg, Fiber: 4g, Sugar: 17g, Vitamin A: 60IU, Vitamin C: 7.2mg, Calcium: 36mg, Iron: 1.1mg

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

Additional Info

Course: Dessert

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