Walnut Date Dip / Spread

So, this weekend I was challenged to provide party fare for my son’s second birthday party. Normally this isn’t a challenge but on the date of the party all my adult party guests were on a church wide fast and the rest were preschoolers.

How was I going to provide food that fasting grownup and their kids would enjoy? It would be pointless to put out my signature bacon wrapped dates.. but OMG are they fantastic!

There were multiple fasts and strict diets to work around and all dairy, meat, wheat and sugar were out.

No cheese plate
No cream cheese spinach dip
No crackers of any kind…

So, what?

Well I knew I could always fall back on our signature guacamole and blue corn tortilla chips. Seriously we make the absolute best guac in the world.

Secondly most of our guests love hummus and I already had a batch in the fridge that I made earlier this week, so I arranged in on a platter with some cruidté.

I needed a third dip, something naturally sweet that could be eaten with fruit, I used to make an amazing cream cheese fruit dip but we’re Paleo and our guests aren’t eating dairy so… no.

I did had some homemade walnut butter as well as some date honey on hand that I had made to go with our whole 30 eating plan. Surely those two would pair well together… with apples, right?

So I whipped the two together and came up with this walnut date dip that my guests absolutely adored.

I was actually informed that I was making it again today for our church group tonight so I just whipped up batch two and wanted to share it with all the Daniel Fast, Paleo and Whole 30 people out there.

It is totally Paleo and Daniel Fast Friendly, it is Whole 30 acceptable as long as you use this as your minimal dose of dried fruit / sweet for the day.

Ingredients

8 oz Walnuts
8 oz Dates
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups of water
pinch of sea salt
2 Tbsp Coconut Oil (other healthy oils could be subbed in)

Add dates, water and cinnamon to a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Simmer until dates are tender and very soft.

Allow the contents of the pan to cool down a bit and then add to your food processor and blend until totally smooth. Now you have date honey.

Remove the date honey from the food processor and place in an air tight bowl. No need to clean your processor bowl as you will be using the date honey again shortly.

Add in all the walnuts and being processing them, just allow the processor to run for a few minutes until you have a smooth ball of nut butter.

Now, slowly drizzle in your oil as the nuts process until you’re happy with the consistency.

Add in 1/2 – 3/4 of the date honey (or as much as desired) that you made and process together until smooth and slightly fluffy looking.