The yellow leaves of our neighbourhood’s locust trees are trickling down and lining our street with gold.  The summer was full of action and events but the clean up events of Autumn is beginning.

Pumpkin spice and apple cinnamon has been lingering in the air as the smell of baked goods lingers in the air.  It’s sweater weather and layered clothing season and I absolutely love this time of year. 

I’ve been crocheting and updating the house with Fall decorations. (I have a pumpkin decor set for sale in my store click the link in the above picture).  There’s been baking and cooking up hearty meals in the kitchen, but I have one of my favourite dishes that requires zero baking skills.

It’s a dupe of the Snickers bar, which is my go to bar if I’m in a morning rush and missed my early morning breakfast.  This is a healthier option and in my opinion, tastier than the chocolate bar. You need 3 ingredients:  dates, chunky peanut butter and chocolate chips (or your choice of chocolate to melt).

I get pitted or non-pitted dates.  If you get pitted dates, slice the date lengthwise and remove the seed.  It looks like a small peg of wood.  Flatten the date with your fingers or you can use the bottom of a glass or mug to get them as flat as you want.  You will need 2 flattened dates per bar so try to pick them by size.

Next, get out your butter knife and carefully put a good size amount to spread onto the inside of one of the flattened dates.  Take the other similar flattened date and place on-top, inside of the date down, on top of peanut butter.  You should have a date-peanut butter-date layered snack size, I counted 28 total dates for 14 snacks per 1 full bag of chocolate chips, however you can make as many as you want and these can be snacks without adding chocolate, too.

Finally, I melted a full bag of semi sweet chocolate chips, you can melt them in a double boiler or in a microwave safe bowl. I use a thick glass microwave safe measuring cup to melt the chocolate in the microwave for 1 minute stirring the chocolate after 30 seconds and mix well at the end of 1 minute.  I don’t recommend going for more than 1 minute to melt chocolate in the microwave because you can burn the chocolate and it can be deceivingly hot and dangerous to handle.

Now, get some parchment paper and roll out enough for your servings of dates onto a cool surface or onto a cookie sheet. I spoon about a teaspoon of chocolate and place it on the parchment paper.  You’re going to put small teaspoon sized dabs of chocolate about an inch apart from each other then, place each date sandwich on top of each chocolate dab you made.  To finish you can drizzle remaining chocolate on top of each treat.  Put them in the fridge until the chocolate hardens, serve and enjoy.

This is super easy and also a fun activity to do with littles.  Children love helping so you can involve the whole family!  I hope you all try this recipe good for any season.

Have a great Autumn day!