Useful handmade sweets are a hit of recent years. They are served in trendy cafes, presented to each other for the holidays, and they advocate for the most strict diets. Hand-made sweets from dried fruits and nuts will fit perfectly into the PP (proper nutrition) system, diversify the diet or vegetarian menu.

Do-it-yourself simple candies of dried fruits and nuts

For the preparation of healthy sweets, a wide variety of ingredients are used: dried fruits, dried fruits, nuts, seeds, candied fruits, honey. The recipe provides great opportunities for imagination.

Several variants:

  • figs, dried apricots, peanuts;
  • prunes, sunflower seeds, candied papaya and mango;
  • raisins, dried apricots, almonds, vanilla extract;
  • dried apricots, prunes, hazelnuts;
  • sun-dried orange, almonds, dogwood.

Cooking recommendations:

  • The ingredients are added in approximately equal amounts; options are possible according to taste preferences.
  • For a harmonious taste, one of the ingredients should be slightly acidic: dried apples, cherries or cranberries, and more. Citruses can be added dried or fresh, along with the peel.
  • Nuts and seeds must be dried in the oven or in a pan. You do not need to fry, just warm to the first smell and cool.

Walnuts are best bought in shells and peeled before cooking, as they quickly oxidize under the influence of light and begin to bitter.

  • Soak very hard or dried fruit in warm water, drain it and dry the food on a towel.
  • All components are grinded in a meat grinder or blender into a dense, sticky mass.
  • You need to try the blank to check how harmonious the mixture turned out. The taste can always be balanced by adding a pinch of salt in a fatty paste, lemon juice in sugary, honey in thick and so on.
  • Slightly dampened hands from the resulting paste form candies in the form of a truffle or a ball.
  • Sweets are rolled in poppy, cocoa, sesame, ground nuts or coconut, so that they do not stick together and do not get your hands dirty. In addition, after registration, the dessert becomes more attractive.
  • On top of the candy can be decorated by pressing a nut into it. From a whole nut, you can make a surprise filling.
  • Ready candies should be cooled before serving until solid. You can do this in the freezer if the recipe does not have fresh fruit or cottage cheese. Dessert without liquid will not freeze.
  • Shelf life at temperatures from 0 ºС to 4 ºС is usually not more than a week. Https: //www.youtube.com/watch? V = 5tOoKldusA0

With the addition of dates

A special ingredient is dates. Their rich and slightly sugary relish allows you to create exquisite duets of tastes and does not require diversity in the composition of the dessert.

Good companion ingredients:

  • banana (dried or fresh), added 1: 1;
  • sunflower seed;
  • peanut;
  • orange and almonds.

Homemade sweets with dates will be very sticky. It is better to roll them in chopped nuts, sesame or coconut. Cocoa powder is absorbed very quickly, and the dessert will lose its appearance. You can add a chocolate touch by adding cocoa inside or dipping candies in grated dark chocolate.

How to make a chocolate treat

Chocolate coated sweets have a completely professional look.

To prepare, you need high-quality chocolate, it does not matter, white, dark or milk.

  1. Paste each candy on a toothpick.
  2. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
  3. Melt the chocolate in a water bath in a deep bowl. You can add a little butter to make the icing softer.
  4. Dip each piece into chocolate.
  5. Wait for the surplus to drain.
  6. Stick a toothpick into the foam base so that the glaze hardens on weight.
  7. Chill the candies in the fridge again.
  8. To remove a toothpick, delete. Https: //www.youtube.com/watch? V = 0Z_NO8xDbQw

Cooking with honey

Honey not only gives sweets sweetness and aroma, but also serves as a binder in recipes with lots of nuts and seeds.

If you are allergic to honey, you can soften the texture of the paste with maple or rosehip syrup instead of liquid honey.

Too soft a mixture is easy to thicken by adding any dried fruit or nuts if the honey is not thick enough.

An example of a recipe with honey:

  • walnuts - 150 g;
  • coconut flakes - 50 g;
  • dates - 50 g;
  • thick honey - 100 g;
  • cocoa powder - 50 g;
  • salt - 5 g.

For decoration, it is better to use coconut.

PP candies from dried fruits and nuts

Adherents of good nutrition will prefer to make natural sweets less sweet and greasy. For this, a binder component with a neutral taste, rich in protein and amino acids - boiled chickpeas - is added to the mixture. This is a variety of peas, popular in the East and already appreciated by our cuisine.

For 250 g of boiled chickpea:

  • peanuts - 50 g;
  • hazelnuts - 100 g;
  • dark chocolate - 200 g;
  • vanilla extract.

As a sweetener in this recipe, it is proposed to use stevia in powder. This is another useful product, with almost zero calorie content and a rich phytochemical composition.

With oatmeal

Oddly enough, one of the most delicate and delicious types of sweets is obtained from simple oatmeal. It does not even need to be boiled.

For 200 g of dry "Hercules":

  • 200 g of walnuts;
  • 200 g of any sweet dried fruits: raisins, dates, dried apricots;
  • 100 g of honey;
  • 10 g of cinnamon;
  • 30 g odorless vegetable oil.

You can use some more cinnamon to decorate.

  1. Grind oatmeal into coarse flour.
  2. Interrupt the remaining components with a blender and mix the workpiece thoroughly.
  3. Form sweets and roll them in cinnamon.

As an option, you can make rectangular sweets: smooth the sweet mass at the bottom of a greased form, cool in a freezer and cut into portioned diamonds.

Recipe for children

Sweets with cottage cheese are soft, absolutely not cloying, and inside there is a pleasant surprise - a whole nut or grape. This is the perfect treat for the little sweet tooth.

You will need:

  • 100 g of cottage cheese;
  • 50 g of walnuts;
  • 100 g of prunes;
  • 100 g of figs;
  • 100 g of raisins;
  • half a lemon with a peel.

In addition, you need to cook whole roasted nuts or grape seedless according to the number of candies.

  1. All components, except cottage cheese, are crushed and combined into a thick sticky mass. Wide cakes are fashioned from it, 1.5 times wider than candy in size.
  2. The cottage cheese should also be thick and sticky, in too dry you can add a little yogurt or fresh banana.
  3. Using two teaspoons, form a ball of cottage cheese.
  4. Press the nut inside.
  5. Put the curd filling on the dried fruit cake, carefully roll it up and arrange the ball.
  6. Roll in sesame, ground cornflakes or cocoa.
  7. Refrigerate until completely hardened and serve. Store sweets with cottage cheese is not recommended.

Useful properties and contraindications for dessert

A lot of scientific and popular literature has been written about the benefits of dried fruits and nuts. There is no sense in analyzing the content of vitamins, healthy fats and acids in a culinary article, especially since the content of a particular product in each candy is not large.

However, Academician Amosov’s vitamin paste comes to mind, which he developed to restore patients in the postoperative period. It is still used as such, and is also recommended for healthy people to maintain immunity.

Structure:

  • black and white raisins;
  • dried apricots;
  • figs;
  • prunes
  • walnuts;
  • natural honey;
  • lemon with peel.

All ingredients are taken in 1: 1 proportions (fresh lemon - one per three kilograms of pasta), crushed and applied daily one spoon three times a day before meals. By the way, round sweets can also be formed from it.

This nut-fruit mixture activates general and local immunity, has an antioxidant effect, restores the nervous and digestive systems, has a beneficial effect on the functioning of the heart and other organs.

Despite the fact that fruits are used in dried and dried form, they still have enough useful substances to create a therapeutic effect with regular use.

Another undoubted advantage of natural sweets is the lack of flavor enhancers and other food chemicals in them. There will never be an euphoric desire to eat a kilogram of such sweets at once, even the largest sweet tooth can hold it in its hands.

With all the positive qualities, candies from dried fruits and nuts have a number of contraindications to use:

  • The calorie content of one candy, on average, is more than 30 kcal, so for people suffering from excess weight, this dessert, like any other, should be eaten in limited quantities.
  • High glucose can be dangerous for people with diabetes.
  • Nuts, dried fruits and honey can be strong allergens, so allergy sufferers, pregnant women, nursing children and children under three years of age can eat these foods, observing a reasonable daily allowance.
  • The most serious contraindication refers to various diseases of the digestive system: various ulcers, gastritis, gallstone and urolithiasis.

It remains to add that the process of making homemade sweets is quite a pleasure. It can become a wonderful pre-holiday tradition or a fun attraction for a family, children's or adult holiday.

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