Snickers bites

Everyone likes Snickers, right? At least I do. There's something magical about the scrumptious get-together of salty peanut, caramel and chocolate. The ingredients in the normal Snickers, though? Less magical.

So,  let's make a goodie version out of the teeth-jarringly sweet snack bar, shall we?

Syötävän hyvä beat me to it again. Or inspired me to get snickering in the first place, actually. I chose to take the "cover everything in double chocolate" route (because, why not?). And it was good and bad at the same time. Good, because more chocolate = more chocolate. Bad, because in this case, as I doubled the chocolate amount, I added way more sweetener than I should have. Also, the honey I was using was a spreadable type, not the runny one. So the chocolate became super thick. Yummy, but very very super honeylicious and thick.

I felt slightly sick after a few samples. to be honest ;). But what wouldn't I do for the sake of experimenting! Now I know. Next time: start easy on the honey. Or use maple syrup. Or coconut syrup.

I also decided to go for bite size goodies instead of full bars, since nobody could eat a whole bar of this stuff (or if they could, I'd very much like to see that). And I even halved the bites in the end. So these were more candies than bars in the end, but hey, more for everyone!

Next time I'd also like to get the chocolate a bit crunchier, which would probably mean less sweetener, more cacao butter. Something to think about, for the next time around.

I bought unroasted and unsalted peanuts, but ended up roasting and salting them :D. So, just buying the regular ones would probably have made more sense. But making stuff from scratch is also fun. At least I didn't grow the peanut trees (bushes? where do they grow?) myself :D

Snickers bites

Base

1 dl peanut butter

2 tbsp liquid sweetened (I chose maple syrup)

2 tbsp almond meal

(a dash of salt if using unsalted peanut butter)

Filling

8 soft dates, pitted

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 tbsp water

dash of vanilla powder

dash of salt

peanuts on the top (unroasted and unsalted or the normal ones)

Coating (for the double chocolatey way)

6 tbsp melted cacao butter (melt in a double boiler)

2-4 tbsp liquid sweetened (I used honey and 4 tbsp was way too much)

6 tbsp raw cacao powder

dash of vanilla powder

Line a freezer box/suitable container (ca. 10 x 20 cm) with baking paper. Mix the base ingredients. Spoon into the container and flatten out. Put in the freezer.

Mush the filling ingredients into a smooth paste with a hand mixer. Spoon on top of the base, spread out evenly. Press a desired amount of peanuts on top and stick in  the freezer for a couple of hours (or overnight).

Make the chocolate coating by mixing the ingredients together. Add sweetener if desired, but take heed from my mistake and start with a smaller amount. Lift the frozen snickers chunk out of the container using the baking paper. Cut into bars or bites. 

Dip bites in the chocolate and, ideally, lift onto a rack to drain. If, like me, you don't own a full set of praline making goodies which includes a fancy rack, just let a little of the excess chocolate drain back into the bowl and then set the bites on a plate and watch the excess choco melt into a charming little puddle around them.

Put back into the freezer and take out only as much as you're serving: the chocolate starts melting quite quickly. If you're particular about the look of the bites, you can cut out the excess chocolate from around the bites if you want them to resemble squares more than blobs. I tried my best, but since my chocolate was very thick, my bites remained adorably plump :).