What is Date Paste?

Date Paste (otherwise known as Date Puree) is a blended or pureed mixture of dried dates and water. It’s super easy to make in your own kitchen using only two ingredients.

How to Store your Homemade Date Puree

Once made, I store my date puree in a glass jar in the fridge. I recommend using within 7 days.

How to Make Date Paste at Home

This is seriously one if the easiest recipes to make.

You only need two ingredients and a blender.

SOAK: Start by soaking 2 cups of dried and pitted dates in 1 and a half cups of boiling water. Cover and set aside for about 20 minutes.
BLEND: Pop the soaked dates AND the water you soaked them in into your blender and puree until smooth. This should take less than a minute.
STORE: Spoon the date paste into a jar.

Kitchen Products you will Need

You will need these kitchen appliances and equipment:

A good Blender. If your blender is a little under powered, chop the dates into pieces before soaking. This means your blender won’t have to work that hard to puree them to a smooth paste.
Mason Jar. This recipe fills a 16 oz jar (I use a these regular Mason Jars)
Scraping Spatula. If you’ve ever tried to scrape a thick mixture out of your blender then you will understand how necessary this kitchen tool is. It makes the job of getting every last bit of date paste out of the blender and into the jar a whole lot easier.

Are Dates Healthy?

Dates get a lot of criticism as they are high in natural sugars, which makes anti-sugar campaigners a little jittery. Now, if you follow my blog, you may know that we still eat sugar in our home, but we see it as a treat food rather than something to avoid altogether.

For me, Dates fall into this category – their high sugar content means they get treated as sometimes ingredient rather than an everyday kind of food. But the reason I don’t exclude them from our diet is that they contain a significant amount of nutrients, fiber and antioxidants which I feel is too good to ignore.

The health benefits associated with dates include promoting muscle development, brain health, bowel regularity, and more. [1]. 15% of the daily requirement of essential minerals such as copper, potassium, magnesium, and selenium can be obtained by eating 100 grams, or about 4 pitted dates per day. [3]

HEALTHY DATE RECIPES TO TRY

Date paste is a brilliant alternative to most sweeteners in baking recipes. It can be used as a sugar substitute in loaves, muffins, bars and biscuits. I’m looking at remaking my banana bread recipe this week using Date Paste to replace the Maple Syrup. I’ll add the link as soon as this is done.

I’ve recreated my Chocolate Chia Pudding using date paste instead of honey and I must admit, the result was actually surprising. The Pureed date resulted in a smoother, velvety pudding texture that tasted more like a decadent pudding than a ‘healthy food’. Even my fussy kid loved it – which is a very big deal.

These Ginger Ninjas are always a big hit and the pureed date makes for a smoother textured biscuit which appeals to kids who don’t like the ‘lumpy bits’ in food 🙂

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