We call this Healthy Peanut Brittle a treat food. It’s a little bit naughty because it’s sweet – it uses some 100% maple syrup, but it’s also good because it includes good fats from coconut oil and protein from peanut butter. You only need 1-2 pieces and your body will know you don’t need anymore. This is not a school lunchbox recipe, but could be an after school treat to help kick start any homework or to fill the gap between hometime and dinner.
I let our kids name the recipes I create, so I feel it’s necessary to say, this recipe is a far cry from the traditional peanut brittle. Here’s the story how this name came about.
Our daughter called this Healthy Peanut Brittle. It doesn’t have toffee nor large chunks of nuts, so all I can say I’m impressed with her thought process with this one. About 2 weeks before I made this, we visited a school fete at Armidale, and I gave the kids $2 to buy something from the cake stall. They don’t get a lot of those kinds of foods and there was much excitement. Indrani chose peanut brittle. Two big slabs for $2. She made it halfway through the first and couldn’t eat anymore. Too sweet she said. This healthy peanut brittle does have peanut butter in it hence the peanut in the name and it uses raw buckwheat so that’s where the parallel to nut chunks came from, and it needs to be kept in the freezer so that’s the crunch factor. That’s a 10 years olds thinking.
This recipe is shaped from a raw choc-raspberry bark recipe from my favourite health site – Food Matters TV. I didn’t have cacao or raspberries but I liked the sound of the recipe so I tweaked it for what I had in my pantry – this Healthy Peanut Brittle was the result.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup coconut oil, melted*
- 1/2 tspn vanilla powder
- 1/4 cup 100% peanut butter (you could use any nut butter)
- 1/4 cup 100% pure maple syrup
- 3 tbspn buckwheat
- 1/2 fresh banana, diced into little chunks
* The best way to melt your coconut oil for this recipe is to put the jar (or a small amount in a bowl), and place it in a hot water bath. You do not need the oil warm for this recipe – just melted.
Method
- Place the oil, vanilla powder, peanut butter and maple syrup in a bowl and whisk together until combined well.
- Add in the buckwheat and mix well
- Stir through the banana chunks
- Pour into a lamington tin lined with baking paper – be sure the buckwheat and banana are spread throughout the whole tray
- Place in the freezer for a min of 20 minutes or until hard
- Take out and break into pieces / shards – place in an airtight container and pop back into the freezer. Enjoy a couple of pieces here and there.
Storage / Freezing
Best stored in and eaten directly from the freezer. Store in an airtight container.
2 Other ways
- change the fruit from bananas to another fruit of your preference. Berries would work well
- Use the Food Matters recipe – it’s amazing too!