Vegan No-Bake Choco Peanut Butter Slices

Last Updated 5 years ago

Hold onto your knickers because these choco-peanut butter slices are going to literally BLOW YOUR MIND. Okay, I get a little excited about desserts, but this IS a dessert to get insanely excited about.

Why?
Well, they are:

Vegan
Gluten Free
Refined Sugar Free
Raw
No Bake
Nothing Artificial

But most of all, they’re TO DIE FOR. No matter what dessert recipe I post after this, I guarantee it won’t be as good as these nut butter slices. It’s just not possible. This is as good as it gets folks.

I might be a major PB fiend, but I think anyone with an appreciation for chocolate and nutty flavour combos is going to fan-girl over these bars.

I originally got into no-bake baking out of necessity. I live in an RV for half of the year and the oven that comes with it is laughable. It’s an open flame type oven, so absolutely everything I’ve ever tried to cook in there comes out with a burnt bottom. Pizzas, breads, cookies… all of them black as tar underneath. Since I don’t have an oven I’ve gotten good at making desserts on the stove top, or better yet, ones like these choco-peanut butter slices that don’t need to be baked at all.

But I wanted to add another element to my raw baking. I wanted to see how delicious I could make something that was also vegan AND gluten free, in addition to it being no-bake. That is how these slices came to be.

If I had the opportunity to eat one chocolate bar for the best of my life, it would likely be Reece’s peanut butter cups. Only, the ingredients are crap. They are filled with refined sugars, stabilizers and preservatives. Not really something I’d want to eat for an entire lifetime.

So I set out to make a PB dessert that tasted just as good, but was a little better for my body.

I went through quite the testing stages for these slices, but I always had happy guinea pigs out at the lake that selflessly sampled my different variations.

This blog contains TWO variations you can choose from.

Healthy RV Desserts:
No Bake Vegan Choco-Peanut Butter Slice

Space and Equipment Needed:

8×8 Square baking pan
Parchment paper
Medium sized mixing bowl
Measuring cups and spoons
Blender or Food processor
Microwave or stove top with small pot

The only space you need is big enough to measure out ingredients, have the square pan in front of you, a mixing bowl and a blender. Less than 2×2 feet of counter space.

1st Variation – Choco Peanut Butter Slice

Shopping List:

Coconut Oil
Mixed Nuts (unsalted and raw)
Organic Cacao Powder
Natural Maple Syrup
Medjool Dates
Organic Peanut Butter

(small shopping list, right!?)

I realized when I grabbed the PB jar to take this pic I had actually grabbed my husbands normal PB. This Organic and natural one from Safeway was actually the kind I used and not the one with the added sugars, etc.

Ingredients and Measurements:

Base:

1 cup of dates
1 cup of mixed nuts
Slightly less than 1/3 cup cacao powder

Middle:

1 cup peanut butter
2 tablespoons coconut oil
2 tablespoons maple syrup

Top:

4 tablespoons coconut oil
75 tablespoons cacao powder
1.5 tablespoons maple syrup

Directions:

Base:

If your dates have pits in them, remove pits and measure 1 cup. Put into blender or food processor. Then put mixed nuts and cacao powder into blender as well. Blend. You might have to stop and push mixture off the sides of blender a few times.
Put into 8×8 square dish lined with parchment paper and put in freezer while making middle.

Middle:

In a bowl, mix peanut butter with coconut oil and maple syrup. All three ingredients need to be at room temperature for the mixture to work properly.
Mix with spoon or spatula until creamy and smooth
Take out base from freezer and top it with peanut butter mixture
Put back into freezer

Top:

Take coconut oil, cacao powder and maple syrup and put into a dish in the microwave OR a small pot on the stove top. Heat until just melted.
Take mixture out of freezer and pour chocolate onto
Put back in freezer for 2 hours

Take out of freezer, cut into about 20 pieces, and die and go to heaven.

2nd Variation – Choco Peanut Butter Slice

Now, THIS 2^nd variation of the choco-peanut butter slice is a little lower in sugar than the other, but it DOES have 1 naughty little ingredient that some health food peeps are not going to be down with. I also made it a little ‘extra’ by adding in some protein powder into the base.

The Changes:

Maple Syrup-
I wanted to sub the maple syrup for a keto maple syrup I saw that uses monk fruit, but sadly it’s not easy to get in Canada. So instead, I went an grabbed an old favorite of mine, the E.D. Smith syrup with 80% less sugar than maple. BUT… it uses Sucralose as it’s sweetner. I know… that dirty little sucralose. Well, if you are okay using it, then let’s continue.

I basically swapped out the E.D. Smith syrup for maple syrup in equal amounts, but added a little more of the E.D. Smith (about 20%).

This saved about 36 grams of sugar throughout the entire recipe, so around 2 grams per slice.

Truvani Protein Powder-
In the base I cut back on the cacao powder to just under ¼ cup, and added ¼ cup of Truvani chocolate vegan protein powder. This just gave the base a little more density and taste. You could use any vegan protein powder you want! (or any type for that matter if you don’t care about the slices being vegan)

Since the protein powder gave it a bit more binding power, I reduced the dates just slightly. Probably 1 less date, so just a tiny bit under 1 cup.

Lindt-
Instead of making my own chocolate out of cacao powder, maple syrup and coconut oil, I melted a 85% dark chocolate bar by Lindt. Since it’s SUPER dark chocolate, it kept grams of sugar down and gave it an intense rich taste. If you don’t like REALLY dark chocolate, don’t try this substitute, but I love it!

2^nd Variation Refined Shopping List:

Coconut Oil
Mixed Nuts (unsalted and raw)
Organic Cacao Powder
E.D. Smith Low Sugar Syrup
Mejool Dates
Organic Peanut Butter
Truvani Protein Powder
Lindt 85% Chocolate Bar

Nutritional Info

I DO count calories when it comes to baking, only because it’s extra and additional to eating healthy meals. Even though I make healthier versions of desserts, I like to know what’s in them, so I don’t go overboard.

Here is the approximate nutritional info on the choco-peanut butter slices when cut into 20

Version #1

Calories 172
Fat 12
Fibre 3.5
Protein 5.5
Carbs 13
Sugars 8.5
Net Carbs 9.5

Version #2

Calories 152
Fat 11
Fibre 3
Protein 5.5
Carbs 11
Sugars 6
Net Carbs 9

As you can see, version 2 has slightly lower net carbs, sugars and calories, but not much.

Nutritional Notes

Yes, these are vegan, natural, and made with a ton of organic and great ingredients. But no, that doesn’t mean you should eat the entire tray in one sitting.

While the nutritional info might seem high for some people, remember not only are these ingredients WAY better than eating a chemical filled chocolate bar, but that they are meant to be a treat. Choosing one of these will always be better than the 800 calorie, 100 gram of sugar cheesecake that you could have instead.

Go ahead, you definitely earned this one!

Vegan No-Bake Choco Peanut Butter Slices – Healthy RV Desserts