Heart Healthy Chocolate Date Sauce

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One word: YUM!

First and foremost, this sauce is delicious! It’s chocolaty, and creamy, and sweet, and perfect for almost anything you’d use regular chocolate sauce for.

As a bonus, the sauce is nourishing for the body, and particularly for your heart!

I started with dried dates. Get the whole ones that are pitted. Don’t get the little pieces that are rolled in oat or rice flour. Dates are naturally sweet, with a high sugar content. But don’t let that worry you. As a whole food, these little beauties pack a serious nutritional punch! Yes, they are a good source of fiber, but they are very high in potassium. Remember that potassium helps lower your blood pressure, working as a check-and-balance for sodium. Few people consume enough potassium, so this is a great help! Dates are also a source of iron, magnesium, copper, and several B vitamins.

The beautiful caramel color of the dates inspired me to make it a chocolate sauce. Cocoa does have some antioxidant qualities. This has led the general public to sometimes justify over-consuming chocolate bars and other chocolate candy, believing the health benefits might outweigh, or at least equal, the unhealthiness. Sadly, that’s not true. While unprocessed cocoa is high in antioxidants, adding cocoa butter, sugar, and milk or cream to make chocolate candy cancels out health benefits.

In this chocolate sauce, however, I’m using none of those things! Only whole, minimally processed ingredients, so you feel good about pouring it on!The inspiration for this recipe came from the recipe for Date Syrup in the How Not To Die Cookbook.